kitten heart

Dear K-

You feel the restlessness that has shivered in my bones for most of my life. The temptation of the trivial, the tiny tasks and diversions that bring a smile to our lips- they whisper to us, a gentle pleading to come out and play. But you’re stuck behind a monitor that speaks in cyan, magenta, and yellow thoughts and I’m sitting at my kitchen table staring at the leaves of flesh from the corpse of an oak over which I’ve tattooed with graphite scrawlings. The deviation is equal to the distance decentered multiplied by the power of the lens...The saddest tattoo on the palest of flesh.

We can entertain whims when the time permits. These days, it seems you are abandoning the shore and wading into the deeper waters of uncertainty, attracted by the glitter of a distant horizon that promises happiness. You’ve acknowledged the land holds nothing for you: it’s time to swim. You’re treading between the novelty you wish to encapsulate on stage and the cobwebs you think you require for your prose. I hope you can find your way out of limbo. You are used to the work and the struggle, but I hope for you it pays off and you reach that distant shore.

I apologize for fading away again. The last few months have been hard to endure. A week ago I again found myself in a hospital, strapped up to machines by electrodes. They punctured me with needles, they stole my blood. They hooked me up to a sagging sack that dribbled its poison into my arm as I slowly watched my vein collapse and let the blood pool in darkening chambers beneath my flesh, later to become horribly unattractive bruises stretching from my inner elbow to upper forearm. All for nothing except for some sympathetic shrugging of shoulders, heads tilted in silent confusion, and a request for more tests at a later date. They can’t figure out what’s wrong with this heart and I’m beginning to think I will never know, either. In some ways, that’s probably for the best.

I’m living hour to hour these days. The only thing keeping me afloat is the idea that winter will bring a break for the holidays, and an ever supportive presence of a boyfriend who refuses to believe I am anything but perfect for him. Note…for him. There is acknowledgement of flaws, but every nuance of my being seems to strike the proper chord with him. And he with me. When I was in the hospital he brought me soup…I don’t think he understood that soup is for colds but he’s Serbian and the soup was delicious so I will never correct him on it.

Go on and find your dreams. Some of us still struggle to even fall asleep.
-K