Oh Please! Oh, please. oh. Please. Oh! please. Oh? Please. ohhhhh, please. Oh please oh please oh please.

Dear K,

Oh! Ennui. Stifling steaming ennui! It is rolling through your letters and syllables like a thunderstorm. The sound dopplers past me and I hear its speed, spreading seeds of disdain and distaste and hatred of hate and then finally there comes cool waves of detachment. What a sweet summer rain of apathy my dear. Oh I sincerely revel in it. I have found again my love of humans and I am in love with our species and we are very happy. The human race and I are thinking about settling down on a nice little planet, the rent isn't too high and we can afford to sit outside and drink wine on the patio as the sun dips down in the evening.

Laughter and birdsong, these are the things I prescribe.

But really, in the worst possible way I want to warm your untouchable heart and make you laugh and sing silly little songs about toast with me.

We could be uncontrollable and hilarious and skip down cobbled streets with old shoes tied around our necks and bare feet barely touching the ground. Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't it be nice of us to be such great beings?

Or maybe it is better to relax and slowly droop our eyelids at the whole joke of it all. Entropy is rushing madly in and even the rules of time break as we sip our rapidly cooling tea. Maybe one day the universe will be so old that it will be young again and then I could convince you finally of the things that set me free.

I wish I could be everything for a moment, but for this moment I'll be fine if I could just have a glass of wine and sit, and sit and stare and laugh and smoke cheap cigarettes and not care about the cancer that comes later in the night of my life to steal me early into sleep.

Wouldn't that be lovely?

Oh please my lovely say that it would be lovely.

caution: contents hot

Dear K-

I have been busy. I apologize. For the record, I didn't automatically banish your call to my voice mail. I was up in international waters when you called and I didn't have service. I actually didn't receive the message until several days later, as it was.

It's the time of year for my insomnia to return. Hot, stale nights of laying on top of the sheets, wondering why I can't relax. It's fantastic. I mean that in the most sarcastic of ways.

Perhaps my lack of sleep is evident by the dryness of this letter. Who knows. Of course, as I sit in this crowded little cafe, drinking an unreasonable hot cappuccino that makes me feel like I'm sweating on the inside as well as the outside, I can't help but think that at least my insomnia has come about at a time when I can stand to sleepwalk through the days. I don't work at the moment, unless you call pecking away at a childishly-written detective novel work. Because that's what I've been up to lately. I've been trying to write again.

And it's all going in the drawer. I don't give a fuck. I did let a coworker read two of my previously written detective stories. That cheap, miserable drivel I pump out when I have nothing better to do. She adored the first, but then commented that in the second story the lead character started sharing too many of my own personal insecurities.

In high school, my AP English teacher told me to write what I know. I guess I know my insecurities. I didn't know what else to do.

I hope you are well. I hope you are enjoying your fluster of activity and preoccupation.

Undulating,
-K

There, I dropped you a line.

Dear K,

You must be almost as busy as me. I am very busy. Much too busy to talk. Please don't call, or write, I would feel so bad because I wouldn't have the time to answer.

Oh my yes, I'm very busy.

Also, I really am doing quite a lot these days, but you should call and or write and we should catch up.

Yours,

K

zugzwang

Dear K-

I’m sorry to hear of your loss. I know that’s what is always murmured when one loses a loved one, but I mean it sincerely. I am sorry.

I haven’t been around lately, even though I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m just not here, in the sense of that I am not really living but I am merely killing time. The days have been like leaves, and I’ve been watching them slowly turn and wither until they drop away one by one into the muddy creek bed below. But what can one do when one knows she inevitably must up and move again. No point in drawing connections, no point in looking to join any clubs or organizations, no point in tying yourself to anything here. Just live day to day and do your job well until the day you leave.

Sometimes I think about death, but I try not to do it often. More frequently I think about aging and that actually tends to upset me more. Every day I see patients who are reaching the end of their lives and they tell me how they don’t move fast anymore or they aren’t happy or their spouse is gone and it’s lonely in the nursing home. They tell me about how everything I have and enjoy will eventually go away: your mobility, your independence, the people you love. It all goes away. I hold their hand and I feel their weight sway hard against my forearm as I help them walk about the office. Usually I have to stoop over to support them and they comment about how I won’t be so tall once I begin to age and I won’t be able to wear heels anymore. Sometimes when they press against me I feel like they would collapse, their bones would crumble into dust were I to step away and let go. To think that someday I will be in that state is incredibly upsetting. I try not to imagine how miserable I will be when I am old.

So perhaps, in a way, maybe some people enjoy death. Maybe they prefer it rather than to postpone the inevitable and prolong the pain of being alive. That being said, I’m still sorry for your loss. I still imagine most people would prefer not to die.

Try to stay on solid ground for the next few days. Don’t tread on soft soil.
-K

This Is Heaven

Dear K,

We dream of a field. Green grass stretches to the horizon. And we walk up stone steps out onto the field. But there in gentle sunlight filtering through white clouds and sleepy breezes are all our friends and family, and there we laugh and giggle and gallop as we did when we were young and innocent.

We run and jump screaming from the joy of it all. Old faces and friends we never saw again.

This is my dearest wish when I die.

I wish to hold the hand of my beloved as one of dies, and know that I will see her again soon.

I'm going to say this at my grandfather's funeral.

K

Dear K,

The next day after I wrote you we had a wedding shower for my sister. My grandpa was supposed to come.

After the shower we went over to his house.

He had died in his sleep. He was a really good man who earned his rest.

,
K

What do you think about when you think about death?

Dear K,

Another one of my family members died this week. It was my Grandmother's brother. He died of an aneurysm. Apparently it runs in my family.

I've always thought, or known somehow, that I am going to die young. Somehow, with the death of this man that I barely knew, this has become more sure.

I think about my friends and what they will say.

But mostly I think about my last words. So here are they are in case I die before the morning comes.

Thank you. I'd like to say thank you to everyone here, and everyone who couldn't make it. Sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, thank you.

I feel my heart beat too fast sometimes. I feel the wind on my arms, and up the back of my neck. I feel something calling me, a great pulse, and I am leaving you now. I'm taking everything with me though. The great tragedies and romances I left unwritten on the page. The jokes I never told and the hugs I never gave.

I want to be cremated. Please throw some whiskey in with the fire and let me drift up in the air.

I always believed in Jesus, somewhere deep down, I believed in redemption.

Redeem me.

Goodnight,

K