you take the red line to morse

Dear K-

I headed out into the woods yesterday evening. Just as the sun began to dip in the sky, I jumped the last fence and wandered deep into the timber and brush, with no real destination in my head. But how is that different from my everyday life? Do I ever really seem to know where I’m going?

It felt good, that crisp, early autumn wind; I ignored the thorns that caught on my pant legs and sleeves and tugged me in various directions. After an hour or so, their tiny claws dragged me to the creek bed. The creek bubbled thick and black, like tar, as it ambled lazily past. I sat on the bank as night crept upon me and I just stared at my reflection in that murky water. Eventually, all I could make out was a shadowy figure with a glowing red flame for a mouth, the embers of my cigarette pulsing orange with every inhalation. I couldn’t help but think of all the crunchy dead leaves cluttered at my feet as my ashes gently drifted to the soil. Smoky the Bear would have cried that night.

We’re adults now, aren’t we? Doesn’t that mean we should have real lives and real jobs? You say you want the sterile house and the clean pressed dress shirts and the shiny shoes, and yet I’m still sitting out in the woods alone, chilled and ashamed. I want it, too. I want that life. I want the clean-swept apartment with wooden floors and imitation marble countertops. I want a window that opens to let me hear the city streets below as I read on the couch. When I go to sleep at night I want to know that when I wake up he’ll still be there beside me, and I can make him breakfast and kiss him sweetly on the lips before we each head off to our work.

But I don’t have that happiness yet. I’m still stranded in the small town of my youth, drifting through these autumn days and wondering if I should have stayed here after all.

I chose to stay. I chose to give up the life I had there, across the sea. And some days I still wonder if I should have just boarded that plane after all. I’m afraid that sensation may never fully fade away.

Consistently doubtful,
-K

Screaming madly east.

Dear K,

So, now it is Fall, and I've taken up running again, and I've also been looking back on everything I wrote to friends and family in the last year, because I keep a copy for myself. I've been so obsessed with myself. Really it has been disgusting.

But I guess it is only natural because I haven't had anyone telling me what I'm going to be doing five years from now, and I just realized that that has all ended. Now I know that I'm always going to remember this last year.

But I got a job, or anyway, now I'm living back in the town I grew up in. I've just realized that all those sappy sayings and movies and greeting cards about not being able to go home again really are true.

I just want to be clean. I want to live in an apartment in the sky, with white walls and a concrete floor. I want a shower with white tiles, and white towels hanging on the walls, and the sink in the kitchen and the counter-tops, everything is luminous and white, like some Scandinavian surgeon's dream. I want to go running through the streets in my appropriately anonymous work out attire. I want to shave every morning and wear a tie. I want to wear dress slacks and neat black oxford shoes, and my car will be clean and I'll have a briefcase and a stainless steel thermos.

And then a year from now I'll go screaming madly east, and jump into the hordes on the ocean shore and disappear forever in my youth.

What?
-K

i wanted you to feel the same

Dear K-

I’d ask you to forgive me, but I have trouble even forgiving myself these days. My life has been a wilderness, and I’ve become the naughty child who wanders off alone and off the path. Why should I be startled, then, by the twigs and branches which snap against my face and limbs? Why should I cry out in surprise when I feel the bite of the thorns and brambles against my flesh? When I decide to start deviating from the “planned course” of my life, I should surely expect to encounter a few unpleasant thickets.

I can’t go back there. my dreams are empty now. my memories are less like elaborately painted masterpieces and more like snowflakes which flutter and drift as small hazy specks across my face, leaving only a small sting of cold to even hint at their existence before they melt away into obscurity once more. I sat for hours today pondering a note I found scribbled upon an old notepad from a year ago. It asked simply “where does trolley 37 go to sleep?”

I couldn’t remember. I used to know every cobblestone, every jumbled Slavic street name, but now I can’t even recall such a trivial fact of where the autobus 37 shut down for the night.

I miss you, but somehow I don’t think it makes a difference. We’ve become each other, don’t you get it? Am I really missing you, or am I only missing myself? When I look into the mirror and find my nose bloody, am I the culprit? This slick, near-black blood that smears over my fingertips (our fingertips?) seems more like the juice of a summer blackberry than something so precious, so necessary for my life.

Speaking of life, the doctor told me that my heart skips beats.

Mendlovo namesti. Fucking mendlovo namesti. That’s where the 37 goes to sleep.

Regrettably mistaken,
-K

When Will Everything Be Alright?

Dear K,
Did you write that last letter to me? Or was it me that it wrote it to you? I'm still so confused. Did I do that when I was drunk? Did I hit you? Did you just pretend that you hit yourself when it was really my fist? Is my nose bleeding or was it your nose? We've got to figure this all out before everything comes apart at the seems.

Anyway I'm better now, I think. Maybe. Out here in the mountains I don't sweat at night, and I'm shivering in the morning even though it is summer still. The peaks aren't even white yet. The shack that I live in doesn't have insulation and there are holes that let moths in when I stay up writing with a flashlight because there is no electricity.

But I'm better. I think my insides are fixing themselves. I think that everything is going to be better.
It was nice to see you for a while though. Even though when you were around it felt like you were further away, it was nice to dance with you and maybe watch everyone around us age a little while we got confused about who was who and why we ever met.

But I'm better now.

How are you?

Have you left yet?

I'm going to miss you.

And I hope this isn't sappy, because I mean it platonically:

Love,
K

Dear K,
Was there ever any chance for us?
I mean right now I'm not so sure there was ever any chance for me.
My right nostril is bleeding right now. It is my fault. I thought that my arm would stop my fist before it hit my nose. That was my fault, I should have known that I'm stronger than I let on.

I'm messed up. Right now I don't think that anyone thinks I'm worth anything.

God is the cruelest person I've ever prayed to.

Apologies for introducing myself, K.

Dear K,

Lately I've been listening more. This isn't a good thing. I listen too much already. A person is supposed to have a healthy balance right? Take in give out. But I just don't have anything to give out. I'm getting greedy. I just want to sit and listen and never have to say anything ever again.

If I sewed my mouth shut do you think people would notice? I think I'd like to do that. I'd like to have the assumption out there that I'm not going to reply.

But I guess that's half the point of listening, people want you to reply, because they think that if you don't say anything then you haven't heard anything.

I'm just tired of being who I am and I want to move on and move away. I want so badly to leave.

Leaving,

K.

Reality: We're Both So Bad At It

Dear K,

What does it matter where I live? You live in dreams all day. You have your head in the clouds, I love this about you, but you need to come down from there. When was the last time you told anyone how you really feel.

So what if I want to be across the ocean again? You want to live the bohemian life. I'm getting my degree in something useful, I'm going to make things happen for me. I've got plans and goals. I'm going to get back there.

I know you'll say that it is stupid to live for somebody else. Probably because you think I'm living for him, I'm not. It is about more than him. When I was there I was free to be what I am. They didn't know me, I was a complete mystery to everyone I met, and instead of believing that they knew who I was they took the time to understand who I could be. Maybe that's why I'm trying to get back so hard, so I can become that person I wish I was.

Affections Tainted by Past Interactions,

K