Dear A,

Letters unsent.

[dear-artemas]

One day the thought of you will feel like the aftertaste of a nightmare.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

Maybe only a plague outbreak could save me.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

Lately, sleep has become a rare occurrence for me. I’m not particularly good with sudden changes, you would know.

I’m still not certain why I had decided to move. In my mind, I still return to our apartment every time when I come back from a walk.

It’s done me a lot of good, I suppose. Yulia still insists on talking to me about you, and I‘ve become inanimate enough to stay silent. She ignores all the hints and rejections and tries once more and once more after that, hoping to get a different response. She had lost the sort of awkwardness she once had when I fell silent during a conversation, and it’s becoming clear that she’s starting to realise I’m not the only one responsible for the gaping gaps between our spurs of exchanges of words- or lack thereof. She had directed our conversations, and after examining the consequences, she decided that that’s how she intended for it to go on.

That I can understand and sympathise. I don’t exhaust myself giving her even the smallest bits and pieces of you that’s taken over a part of my mind- she doesn’t need to know and I will not have her- or anyone else for that matter- intrude something as intimate as that.

She means no harm, of course. That’s why I do still receive her. She’s much more headstrong than you, though. She doesn’t understand you still. Doesn’t understand your sudden decision of leaving, doesn’t understand why you had decided to not respond to her calls and threats of visiting.

I suspect she will. She won’t be at peace with it, but as she becomes more and more like you (however unlikely by the looks of her now) she will understand. And that’s more than I can say about anyone else.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

Moving during this time has proven to be cumbersome.

I’ve donated anything of mine that had any value and disposed the rest. All I have now is everything you had left behind and funnily enough those are the things I can’t afford to lose.

The broken things. Things that gathered dust after you had left. The torn pages from some notebook that had your crossed out writings. The chipped mug. The rusting cogs you picked up and brought home. The earrings with pieces missing. The suit and ties you were forced into wearing a couple of times at functions.

M

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

The smell of freshly poured coffee in the crisp night air has an edge of melancholy to it. It’s not from our kitchen, which adds to the surprise. Somewhere close by, in one of these rundown apartments with negligible heating groaning piping and unreliable electricity, someone’s routine glides by mine.

The smell is lukewarm and stale. It does not indicate the quality of the brew, but the fact the sipper does not have the time or the heart at this hour for trivial matters like I do. I almost gratuitously pitied him for having to regard it as a necessity more than anything else.

Unlike me. I take it as one of the more reliable means which I can count on to ease the maddening stillness in our room. It’s easier to excuse myself for it on a wintry night like tonight. It makes a good distraction and one that will single-handedly save me from being unable to spend the night alone with my own tangled thoughts and not yours.

Perhaps he should pity me instead. But then again, he wouldn’t have the time or the heart for that either.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

Once again I realised that words seldom measure distance, even though in the face of a stranger, distance is much less contagious.

I try nonetheless. From time to time I find myself trying to match my words with the distance between us. Often times I fail, and often times that realisation only comes when I stop the pen and test one against the other.

I read it, I read it again. I do the math that I’ve done a thousand times before. I do it again. Then I try to calibrate the measurement through coffee spoons (If he can do it- why can’t I?) Then I try to fix it through the sheer force I could muster up in one night. Then I look away from the paper, disgusted. Then I pace the room. Then I read it again, calibrate again, measure again. Then I sit back, exhausted, rubbing the weariness off my eyes but failing that too. Then I crumple up the paper and watch in desperate exasperation as the cold, sterile, elaborate but deathly wire bin eats my discarded effort.

I still can’t grasp the effortlessness you possess in matters like this.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

I made a mistake and the fault was completely mine. I’m not going to ask you to forgive me because you did the very same thing, if you do choose to forgive me, fine, if not, I wouldn’t mind either.

If V or Yulia knew-

They won’t. I’m letting you know because you had let me know. It’s only appropriate.

No, it wasn’t because I had fallen for him. It wasn’t because I had wanted to get back at you in any way.

When you had told me it did hurt, although it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would have.

I don’t feel anything for him. It’s strange. You were my first and we simply lasted this long. I don’t know if I could fall in love with anyone else. No, I don’t intend to leave you, as you did not choose to leave me for- what’s his name-

Funny, isn’t it. We had learnt the same lesson through the same mistakes.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

I am a crusader without faith. A broken boyant lost in the sea. A torch under the sun. A leap as time stands still.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

Depression doesn’t equate to pessimism.

I am in the constant state of former, but pessimism has yet to agree with me.

I have no time to spare on self-pity.

Time will continue, it doesn’t heal and I can’t forgive or forget, but there is no sense to hold onto a piece of myself from the past.

No reason to.

I think deep down V knows that. We’ve shared so much of each other over the years of entanglement, it’s hard for him not to understand that.

It’s hard for him not to understand me.

We’ve known each other since birth. Not in a literal sense, but we’ve always been reflections of each other.

The resentment isn’t even there anymore. Maybe there wasn’t any to begin with. Neither of us could have changed the outcome.

He couldn’t let it go and neither can I. I can hardly remember us as we were and I doubt that he could after all these years.

We both know that we still need each other to know who we are, and we can hardly bear it.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

Curiosity is a curse.

I’ve never been so sanguine that I believed in magic, but I’m never one to question the whys and hows. When I was a child, I was often shown magic tricks, puppet shows and science programs (The average part of my childhood I’ve never talked about, but there it is.)

Whilst all the children I knew tried their hardest to decipher the secrets behind, I was never interested. If the puppeteer was maneuvering the lion and the knight, I didn’t care to figure out where the fingers were or how the two voices would switch back and forth. I was never so eager to ruin a story and an experience by constantly guessing what’s behind it.

I’m blessed with my ignorance, and I relied heavily on it.

These days its my only source of comfort.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

Now you are next to me, sound asleep. I’ll mail this letter in the morning if I do decide to send it.

You looked tired when I saw you, mentally exhausted. Besides that you looked healthy, and that’s more than I can say about you merely two years ago.

Perhaps that’s why you’re no longer a light sleeper. It’s a pleasantly surprising discovery.

The way you’re breathing comforts me.

My insecurity surged and suddenly became dormant the moment you almost smiled.

It’s foreign. Once again I don’t know how to process many things about you. When I saw you in winter, it didn’t feel like this. Perhaps it was because you were there, mixed with the blazing sun and soft sand and they have softened you. The sea there had the scent of citrus. The sand warm as oil.

Here is different. And that’s why in certain ways I had the urge to send you right back. There’s nothing to see here, the cliffs are still bitter, our home waters still have the taste of tobacco and rotten catches.

There’s nothing here for you. Nothing here but me.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

Frankly I’m surprised. You had never been jealous, but perhaps distance unnerves the most resilient of us.

The thought of you being jealous over a figure so far-off it might as well be fictitious disturbed me.

But I will admit there was some sort of romanticised thought behind all this. There was the sort of sadness that bloomed in his veins that I’m more than attached to. He is on many levels different than you.

But I will cease spending ink on him. Likely it’s just a craze growing in the depth of my mind. Perhaps distance unnerved me more than I thought it did.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

It’s the ambiguity, is it not?

A play must be specific to be well received. Coming down to it, that’s the whole point.

They want a story, they want a clearly defined beginning, proceeding and an ending. They want me to give them closure.

I wasn’t able to. There wasn’t a story to tell, only the driest of humour and permeating sadness. Empty melodrama.

And the reception in itself had the potential of tragedy, but the blank faced audience won’t like it either.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

Days are endless. My companions at the darkest hour before dawn are perhaps equally perturbed as I am. I don’t know if they acknowledged my existance, I don’t know if they had the heart to. Thoughts have been surging through my mind like the pages of my scripts caught in the storm brewing in the distance. I can’t think about you when I’m like this. My mind is crowded, congested and diseased.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

“Never put a rogue on a throne, for he will never be a king.”

But he will be such a good liar. I would know.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

I’m heading north as early as daybreak, and I’ll be back when summer ends.

M.

[dear-artemas]

Dear A,

V Brought me a gift. He didn’t come yesterday. Instead, there was a half bottle of your favourite sitting at the door.

The fact that he knew made me feel sick to the stomach.

I didn't take the time to chill it and didn’t bother to get a shot glass. Outside temperature was enough. The bottle itself was enough. My insecurity was enough.

It burnt through my throat like a shot of venom. 

I don’t know how I hadn’t taken to it.

M.