Letter and Reply 21
Monday, November 10th and Wednesday, November 12th, 2003
Letter and Reply 21
Delivered at 1:46 pm, Monday, November 10th.
Dear Billy,
Did I mention I’ve been thinking about you?
Are you still sick, love? Your get tomorrow off, don’t you? Holiday and all… Thought you might. Thing is, I get tomorrow off, too, but I don’t want it off at all. No post on Veteran’s Day, you know. I won’t be able to talk to you, or perhaps hear from you, until Wednesday. I should just make Dom work extra, really.
I had a few dreams of you these past few nights. I can’t write them down. If you can understand.
I meant to ask you, have you been staying home sick? I hope you have. Not so much the “sick” part, but the “staying home” part. I wonder how the little ones are doing without you. Their Mr. Boyd has gone missing... They should all bake you get-well cookies. I offered this suggestion to Dom, but he said that he had no baking skills. He said that once he destroyed a cake before he even got it in the oven. I told him he could just spoon you get-well cookie dough, then.
With dark chocolate chips.
How has my bear been treating you? I assume that he’s been kind and hasn’t gotten himself lost. He’s cuddled up nicely beside you, right? He was supposed to, anyway. He’s my substitute protector.
Well, Billy, I need to say something in this letter that will last you until Wednesday. I suppose that since I’ve written you a story/dream, like I said I might, I should also write you a poem, like I’d mentioned. But, you realise, Billy, I’m really, really not good at all with poems. I think I’ve tricked you, in some way, into believing that I’m eloquent. I hope I don’t end up disappointing you, but I’m going to give the poem a shot, anyway. How’s that?
(I don’t know if you can tell, but I am very nervous right now).
So, a poem for you… Here it goes:
In a place where feelings are meant to fly
From heart to heart and eye to eye
I’m sorry I only represent one part
I speak of things I try to do
But when I try to look at you
The greatest things stand still within my heart
I put each word I’d meant to say
Left over from each fearful day
On paper that I sign and send to you
Not to bypass each part of you to know
But to save me wounds of watching you go
And slowly losing anything I ever knew
So here I am inside this place
Where feelings are meant for face-to-face
And also where I stand and face a wall
My every word will be your own
To you, I’ll let my whole be known
When finally my hiding place does fall
Was that okay? Was it all right? I’m so tired now, I can’t tell. I’m afraid even now that I’ll be crumpling this letter into the trash to begin a new one before the next mail run. I get this mood from poetry that I’m just doing everything wrong. But you’re my greatest judge. Was it anything worth keeping?
Well, if I did eventually send this copy of my letter to you, and you don’t happen to like the poem at all, I’ll just tell you right out what I feel instead.
I want to know you, Billy, down to the very last centimeter. I want to explore your entire being and open myself to you for keeps. I’m so tired of only waiting and watching in my own bloody hesitance. I want to finally just reach out to you, take hold of you at last, and plunge myself into you with every emotion I have. Can you understand that? Can you know what it feels to want someone so badly? I see you, knowing it’s you, out of any crowd, and feel you so close. You’re so real and really captivating. I can’t take my eyes off of you. If you really wanted to find out who I was, you could always just look up to the one who can’t stop looking back. I’ll be looking right back at you and smiling.
I caught a bit of the radio today and heard this lyric:
You’re just too good to be true; can’t take my eyes off of you.
You’d be like heaven to touch; I want to hold you so much.
And that is exactly how I feel. Every notion of longing and aching and craving you, Billy, is getting to be too much to stand. You are too good to be true, and I want to know that; to feel it for myself. I know you would be heaven to touch. I’ve felt it all in my dreams, but only in hints. I want to know the sensation to the full. I want to have you around me in a thick veil. I want to… I want you, Billy. I want you so badly. Billy, I want you now, all at once.
If I don’t show up on your doorstep tonight, you can call me the greatest idiot in the known world. I’m going to owe you three chocolate cheesecakes when this is through.
Please get rest, Billy. This letter hasn’t helped that, perhaps, but consider this the tucking-in point. I have my hands around you now, and I’m kissing you to sleep. Sleep, and wake up well tomorrow.
I miss your letters so much. I miss you.
With All My Heart,
MS
Delivered at 4:46 pm, Wednesday, November 12th
Dear MS,
I’m well on the mend, and I contribute most of that to you. Just... everything. Your constant letters, the feeling that maybe, just maybe you were out there, thinking of me. Just thinking of you. I’ve never felt so looked after by someone when they weren’t even there. So, wow. Thank you.
Of course, I also owe a lot to Dom. He should have picked up nursing when he came to Lauderville, not mail delivering!... I take that back, for obvious reasons. But really, he’s been wonderful. Practically waiting on me, putting up with my cranky moods and bad attitudes... I know I couldn’t have done it. I’d have ignored myself long ago. I just hope he doesn’t catch whatever it is that attacked me. I tried to get him to go away, to not get anywhere near me, but you know Dom, he won’t listen to reason. Endearing thing that he is. Either way, I’d only return the favor if he got sick.
Someone else who’s helped me quite a bit is the little bear you’ve given me, who I’ve named Thomas out of lack of creativity on my part. He’s been a great comfort to me. He’s sat by my side the entire time I’ve been ill, and I can’t help but think he’s a little part of you.
I took Thursday and Friday off work. I would have taken Monday and yesterday as well, but I didn’t need to as we had those days off anyway. A miserable six day weekend. I always regret taking sick days when I’m actually sick. They should be spent on something more worthwhile, like road trips.
Like the one in your dream. If only I could have been spending my days like that, with you. It wouldn’t even have mattered if I were sick or not. Every day not spent with some part of you is a day wasted. The highlights of my days are your words, and the rest of my day lives and dies for those moments. And I hang onto the idea that some day I will have those moments all day long.
I’ll find you on Christmas Eve. Even if Dom won’t talk, I’ll knock down every door in Lauderville until I’m frozen through, just to watch every face at the door, to look for that glimpse of you. I’d recognize it if I saw it, I’m sure. If I came to your door, would you show surprise? Would you think I had figured you out?
This Christmas, there will be presents under my tree for you. There will be candles lit on the mantle for you. And there will be a place in my bed for you, so that on Christmas morning we can wake up and not need to see the tree to know that the holiday has arrived, because all the season’s gifts will be right there.
Your poem... you continually surprise me. And amaze me. And... I loved it. If there was anything to get me through the last day of my sickness, it was that. I’m convinced that that is what really broke my out of this.
Sometimes I think I’ll break from wanting you. That everything I’m clinging to will slip away from me and I won’t be able to keep myself from falling. And other moments I think that if I can just hold on for a little while longer, it will be real. And it is. Every day I feel closer to you. And that will make the difference in the long run.
Thank you, thank you for holding onto me.
Reaching for you,
Billy
Back
