Dear M.,
I see you after… how many years? I make it a point to look at your face. I look. I understand one thing: You are the incarnation of Desperation. You are the discarded lover gone mad. You are lonely. Alone. Feeding on long-lost memories. Holding my name between your parched lips. Murmuring it secretly, so it sounds like the squealing sands of a violent desert storm.
You can’t erase my absence. You can’t erase my presence.
It is not because you hate me that you wish to make me suffer; it is because you love me.
Right?
But, no. This is not love. This is Obsession. Consumption. Insanity.
I want to say, You are pathetic. I do not want to make the effort.
I recall how you loved listening to your own voice. I recall how no other voice but yours mattered. Now, there is no voice inside your throat. Your desperation has petrified all timbre.
I recall how you gazed at your own reflection, so lost in self-love. Was what others lavished on you not enough? But for you, nothing was ever enough. Yours was always the need for more.
I recall… it doesn’t matter.
As I close my eyes over these memories, a persistent question saturates my vision: What is a word for who YOU are?
I have no words. Or, rather. I have no energy to seek the words. Or perhaps… I have no desire to expend the energy.
One blink, and you are black tar inside my eyelids.
I discarded you, so long ago. And what I discard, I never recover.
Sincerely,
N.
