"Catlike. Certainly that was the word which best described Clare Kendry, if any single word could describe her. Sometimes she was hard and apparently without feeling at all; sometimes she was affectionate and rashly impulsive. And there was about her an amazing soft malice, hidden well away until provoked. Then she was capable of scratching, and very effectively too. Or. driven to anger, she would fight with a ferocity and impetuousness that disregarded or forgot any danger; superior strength, numbers, or unfavourable circumstances."
21 March 2011
15 March 2011
Solitude - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
13 March 2011
Letters
He lifted up the fold of the envelope, and shattered glass poured out onto the floor, cutting his feet wherever he stepped.
At least, that was how it felt.
Although the floor was covered in blood, it wasn’t his.
The envelope contained a single piece of paper, its folds and edges frayed. The ink was smudged and there were droplets tattooing the paper, but whether it was from tears of sadness or relief, he had yet to find out.
The clock flashed 3:14 at him, a red laser in the darkness taunting and reminding him of how only a few hours had passed; but it felt like each second crawled by. The silence in the worn living room was deafening, even louder than how the hospital was just minutes ago.
“I love you,” she had gasped, “but there’s something you don’t know.”
That was the last thing she said before she fell unconscious.
On the stretcher, she had been mumbling about a letter, but he was unable to hear her over the doctor’s screams and the beeping of the machines. They argued about drunk driving and the possible use of a knife, and he had to resist the urge to punch all of them for assuming this happened on accident. Only he knew the truth – or at least part of it.
Her mother had burst into the waiting room seconds after the doctors closed the doors to her daughter’s room. He was shocked to see how disheveled she was – he knew her as a put-together, obsessive-compulsive, successful businesswoman. But with strands of hair falling out of her bun and her foundation streaked with tears, no one could have been able to even guess that she was a chief executive. She was panting when she approached him.
“She wants you to go to her apartment,” she stuttered, pausing every two or three words. “There’s something for you there. That was the last thing she told me.”
Then she burst into tears again, deepening the faults in her makeup.
* * *
That was how he ended up in the dark living room, not even noticing the darkness because he was in so much shock. He squinted and read the letter in the moonlight streaming through the faded eggshell-colored curtains, the smell of death still hovering in the room. The worn and torn paper contained only eight hastily scrawled words, but those eight drove needles into his eyes.
“Look on the top shelf of the closet.”
Even though his feet felt stapled to the ground, he managed to take small steps. He shuffled through the hallway in a daze, glancing at the photographs framed on the walls, eerily crooked and streaked with angry fingerprints. Her bedroom was usually sixteen steps away – he had that memorized by week three of their relationship – but as he dragged his feet it, felt like six hundred.
As he approached the doorway, he saw that her tableside lamp was on, mimicking the moonlight, only brighter. The moment he stepped in the room, the floor sounded its familiar creak, leftover from the 1989 floor repair after the pipes burst in the apartment below. The whisper of the wood shot warmth through his veins, if only for a second, reminding him that not everything had been shattered in the past few hours.
Her closet was color-coordinated, all of the storage boxes perfectly parallel with the ends of its shelves. But one leg of the vintage-looking wooden box that rested on the top shelf hung over the edge, appearing completely out of place. He wrapped his hands around the chest as though it was a newborn, slowly lowering it to eye level, and after examining it for a few slow seconds, he placed it on her bedside table under the lamp and sat on her bed.
With two fingers, he delicately lifted the lid of the box, coughing out dust as its contents were revealed. The interior was lined with purple velvet, and he traced the seams as though he could feel her touch. The velvet still smelled like her, even with the numerous folded papers stuffed in the box. Each note was carefully numbered, a striking contrast to the rushed manuscript on the paper in the envelope. He dug around the box and unearthed note number one. The paper was almost as delicate as the note in the living room, and he unfolded it as easily as if it were a piece of fabric. The first thing he read among the dozens of lines of writing was his own name.
Colin –
You’re simply unbelievable. It’s only taken three weeks for me to fall head over heels for you, and there has yet to be a day where you don’t put a smile on my face. Every day since we met, you have told me I’m beautiful, and I’m beginning to believe you.
I want to spend more time with you. I want to spend more time getting to know you. I want to spend more time enjoying life with you.
You love me even for all of my faults, which scares me. But when I’m with you, I’ve never felt more secure. I appreciate every single thing you do for me and everything you have taught me.
You’re probably wondering why I’m writing this. It’s because it’s Tuesday today, and I love you.
– Leila
The letter was puzzling, but he felt a subconscious smile lingering on his face as he opened the second note.
Colin –
It’s been about thirty-six hours since I wrote my first letter, and I already regret not giving it to you. You deserve to know how important you are to me.
You take care of me. Most women my age would probably be embarrassed to admit how they stay up all night thinking about how their boyfriend held them back from crossing the street when they weren’t paying attention, but even simple things like that keep me awake reflecting on how blessed I am to have you in my life.
You whispered in my ear today at the restaurant. You said, “I hope that when you’re with me, no matter where we are, you feel at home.” Colin, you have no idea how true that is. You created a home for me when I felt deserted everywhere else. Before you, I felt lost, I was nowhere. But now I am at home.
This morning you arrived at my door and brought me my favorite drink Рa grand̩ mocha, extra whip, 2% dark chocolate milk. As the whipped cream lingered just above my lips I was reminded of the sweetness of your kisses, and I imagined you standing in the freezing cold, your right foot tapping as you waited for Alec the barista to finish making the coffee in the outdoor booth.
You take care of me, Colin. You run your fingers over my skin as though you are touching the most expensive silk in the world. You wipe my tears as carefully as an artist fixing his work. Maybe I am your piece of work – you changed me and shaped me, but you have made me happier than words can describe in a stupid letter like this one.
You are gentle with every touch, you speak as softly as the murmur of a breeze, and I treasure your gaze even when you think I’m not looking. I love you, Colin. Thank you.
– Leila
He folded letter number two back up, wanting nothing more than to rush back to the hospital and feel that familiar surge of warmth he got by holding her in his arms, but something was tugging at him in the back of his mind, reminding him that he was brought to the notes for a reason. He continued to read.
Colin –
I love you, but there’s something you don’t know.
I should have given you those letters when I wrote them. I thought that maybe if you ever read this you would have a chance to understand what I went through.
Today I tried telling you what I’m going to write here, if I can even write it. You’re going to hate me. You’re going to be disgusted with me.
Colin, the reason why you are so important to me is because my last relationship was a living nightmare. I can’t even write down his name. He abused me, Colin. We lived together, and he kept me emotionally tied to him. You helped me unpack in this apartment, but I invited you to stay those first few nights because I couldn’t sleep alone.
The scar on my temple that you love running your fingers across is the part of me I hate the most. It tears me apart inside to look at it in the mirror every day, but I can’t bear to take away the smile you get after you kiss its haunting line. He had his hands on my neck, and barely pressing the blade of his knife to my skin, dragging it across those eternal two and a half centimeters.
His fist seemed to find a home on my flesh – every single day he would strike my arms, my chin, my legs, my shoulders. He threatened me at gunpoint four times and with rope six, but I knew he wouldn’t kill me. He was too infatuated. He loved seeing the purple, blue, and green galaxies of swelling bruises that formed the next day. But in some sick way, I loved him back. I hate myself for it.
We lived in an apartment much different than this one. He chose the isolated room in the corner of the building so no one could hear my screams. They were his favorite noise, like music soothing him into a trance.
He never looked at me the way you do. He didn’t really love me like he claimed – he was just obsessed. He taught me that love is pain, love is feeling suffocated, love is one person strong and one person weak.
After two years, I finally found the strength to leave. I walked right out and spent a week and a half on the street until I was hospitalized with hypothermia after a nasty snowfall. I did not have enough courage to admit what I had been scarred by, blaming the hypothermia on bad exercise habits instead. They asked me about my bruises, too. I swapped the word pushed with fell and told them it was an accident going down the stairs.
Then I lived with my mother for a while. She knew something was wrong with me, but to this day she won’t dare ask. When I was living with her, I slipped into a horrible depression. I laid in my bed all day with the blinds down so the guest room was quiet at all hours. Tissues were useless because the tops of my sheets were constantly soaked anyway. They made me shiver, but I wouldn’t dare get up to change them. I was too weak, too fragile, too broken. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face again, his fist swinging towards my left cheek. Every time I opened my eyes, I stared at the door, tears falling over the bridge of my nose as I lay on my side, fearing each second that he would burst through that door and point his gun at me again. My mother resumed her regular job schedule almost immediately, leaving and coming home like clockwork, only coming in my room after delicately knocking to bring me small portions of leftovers.
She loves you, you know. She loves that you take care of me, just like I wrote.
And she was right.
You made life worth living again.
– Leila
Colin noticed that the ink began to bleed again towards the end of the letter, but the marks were not Leila’s this time – they were his own. He reached for the fourth note.
Colin –
What’s happening to me?
I don’t like time. I have lost so many hours thinking about time.
I don’t write the dates on these pages because I don’t like looking at time.
But I will tell you it has been three months. Three months since I wrote my last letter, and 128 days since I have been keeping these.
It’s come back, Colin.
My dreams, they’re repeating themselves. I see his green eyes staring at me hungrily. I can smell his horrible cigarette breath that clung to my lips after his forceful kisses.
I don’t know what to do. You’re right here with me, and we’re talking, but my secrets lie underneath my words.
– Leila
Colin –
I can’t stand your touch anymore.
It reminds me too much of him.
I know you’re not him.
But I can’t separate anyone,
anything from him now.
– Leila
There was one note left lying in the velvet, its number six tantalizing Colin’s eyes. He was not prepared for whatever message this single paper contained, whether it was as cryptic as the previous note or as painfully detailed as the third.
The lamp threatened to burn out and the moonlight had begun to fade, pink and purple streaks twisting in the sky, hinting at dawn. The amount of light did not matter, as long as he could still read this last letter.
Colin –
I have to go. There is no purpose for me here. I want to cry, I want to feel sadness as I write you this letter, I want the ink to smudge so much that you can’t read this and maybe hope that I’m still here.
I need to be able to feel again, to wake up and see sunlight instead of all of these clouds, fogging my vision.
I’m sorry I’m so weak, that I am unable to see eye-to-eye with you anymore. Maybe you didn’t notice, but to me it has become unbearable.
There’s nothing good left ahead of me here. I have been hanging on by my last thread of the rope for too long, and the string has finally broken. I only have one option now.
But there is one last thing I need from you before I leave. I need to see that warm look in your eyes, feel you run your fingers over my skin as though you are touching the most expensive silk in the world, taste the sweetness of your kiss linger on my lips like the mocha’s whipped cream one last time. That’s the last thing I need.
Colin’s eyes traced and retraced the final paragraph of the note.
Then he realized what he needed to do.
He ran down three flights of stairs to the parking garage, his feet nearly running faster than his own shoes. The next time he caught his breath, he was weaving through lanes of cars, deaf to the sound of their horns and the skidding of his brakes. The entire drive was a blur of red, green, and yellow, all morphing into white and the smell of antibacterial hand sanitizer as he burst through the door of the Emergency Room. He rushed past empty stretchers and operating rooms until he was face-to-face with the temporary nameplate that read the name mirrored on the notes in the wooden box, crooked on the shelf in her closet.
Colin opened the door, holding his breath. Leila’s chest rose and fell beautifully, a miracle spotlighted under the fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling, and Colin finally exhaled, in sync with her.
Her eyelids fluttered when he ran his fingers through her hair, tangled with dried blood. It was as though she could sense his presence, the pulse in his fingertips giving life to her.
A whisper escaped from her lips, barely audible over the regulated beeping of the heart monitor.
“I love you, and now you know.”
Then the only sound in the room was a single tone.
At least, that was how it felt.
Although the floor was covered in blood, it wasn’t his.
The envelope contained a single piece of paper, its folds and edges frayed. The ink was smudged and there were droplets tattooing the paper, but whether it was from tears of sadness or relief, he had yet to find out.
The clock flashed 3:14 at him, a red laser in the darkness taunting and reminding him of how only a few hours had passed; but it felt like each second crawled by. The silence in the worn living room was deafening, even louder than how the hospital was just minutes ago.
“I love you,” she had gasped, “but there’s something you don’t know.”
That was the last thing she said before she fell unconscious.
On the stretcher, she had been mumbling about a letter, but he was unable to hear her over the doctor’s screams and the beeping of the machines. They argued about drunk driving and the possible use of a knife, and he had to resist the urge to punch all of them for assuming this happened on accident. Only he knew the truth – or at least part of it.
Her mother had burst into the waiting room seconds after the doctors closed the doors to her daughter’s room. He was shocked to see how disheveled she was – he knew her as a put-together, obsessive-compulsive, successful businesswoman. But with strands of hair falling out of her bun and her foundation streaked with tears, no one could have been able to even guess that she was a chief executive. She was panting when she approached him.
“She wants you to go to her apartment,” she stuttered, pausing every two or three words. “There’s something for you there. That was the last thing she told me.”
Then she burst into tears again, deepening the faults in her makeup.
* * *
That was how he ended up in the dark living room, not even noticing the darkness because he was in so much shock. He squinted and read the letter in the moonlight streaming through the faded eggshell-colored curtains, the smell of death still hovering in the room. The worn and torn paper contained only eight hastily scrawled words, but those eight drove needles into his eyes.
“Look on the top shelf of the closet.”
Even though his feet felt stapled to the ground, he managed to take small steps. He shuffled through the hallway in a daze, glancing at the photographs framed on the walls, eerily crooked and streaked with angry fingerprints. Her bedroom was usually sixteen steps away – he had that memorized by week three of their relationship – but as he dragged his feet it, felt like six hundred.
As he approached the doorway, he saw that her tableside lamp was on, mimicking the moonlight, only brighter. The moment he stepped in the room, the floor sounded its familiar creak, leftover from the 1989 floor repair after the pipes burst in the apartment below. The whisper of the wood shot warmth through his veins, if only for a second, reminding him that not everything had been shattered in the past few hours.
Her closet was color-coordinated, all of the storage boxes perfectly parallel with the ends of its shelves. But one leg of the vintage-looking wooden box that rested on the top shelf hung over the edge, appearing completely out of place. He wrapped his hands around the chest as though it was a newborn, slowly lowering it to eye level, and after examining it for a few slow seconds, he placed it on her bedside table under the lamp and sat on her bed.
With two fingers, he delicately lifted the lid of the box, coughing out dust as its contents were revealed. The interior was lined with purple velvet, and he traced the seams as though he could feel her touch. The velvet still smelled like her, even with the numerous folded papers stuffed in the box. Each note was carefully numbered, a striking contrast to the rushed manuscript on the paper in the envelope. He dug around the box and unearthed note number one. The paper was almost as delicate as the note in the living room, and he unfolded it as easily as if it were a piece of fabric. The first thing he read among the dozens of lines of writing was his own name.
Colin –
You’re simply unbelievable. It’s only taken three weeks for me to fall head over heels for you, and there has yet to be a day where you don’t put a smile on my face. Every day since we met, you have told me I’m beautiful, and I’m beginning to believe you.
I want to spend more time with you. I want to spend more time getting to know you. I want to spend more time enjoying life with you.
You love me even for all of my faults, which scares me. But when I’m with you, I’ve never felt more secure. I appreciate every single thing you do for me and everything you have taught me.
You’re probably wondering why I’m writing this. It’s because it’s Tuesday today, and I love you.
– Leila
The letter was puzzling, but he felt a subconscious smile lingering on his face as he opened the second note.
Colin –
It’s been about thirty-six hours since I wrote my first letter, and I already regret not giving it to you. You deserve to know how important you are to me.
You take care of me. Most women my age would probably be embarrassed to admit how they stay up all night thinking about how their boyfriend held them back from crossing the street when they weren’t paying attention, but even simple things like that keep me awake reflecting on how blessed I am to have you in my life.
You whispered in my ear today at the restaurant. You said, “I hope that when you’re with me, no matter where we are, you feel at home.” Colin, you have no idea how true that is. You created a home for me when I felt deserted everywhere else. Before you, I felt lost, I was nowhere. But now I am at home.
This morning you arrived at my door and brought me my favorite drink Рa grand̩ mocha, extra whip, 2% dark chocolate milk. As the whipped cream lingered just above my lips I was reminded of the sweetness of your kisses, and I imagined you standing in the freezing cold, your right foot tapping as you waited for Alec the barista to finish making the coffee in the outdoor booth.
You take care of me, Colin. You run your fingers over my skin as though you are touching the most expensive silk in the world. You wipe my tears as carefully as an artist fixing his work. Maybe I am your piece of work – you changed me and shaped me, but you have made me happier than words can describe in a stupid letter like this one.
You are gentle with every touch, you speak as softly as the murmur of a breeze, and I treasure your gaze even when you think I’m not looking. I love you, Colin. Thank you.
– Leila
He folded letter number two back up, wanting nothing more than to rush back to the hospital and feel that familiar surge of warmth he got by holding her in his arms, but something was tugging at him in the back of his mind, reminding him that he was brought to the notes for a reason. He continued to read.
Colin –
I love you, but there’s something you don’t know.
I should have given you those letters when I wrote them. I thought that maybe if you ever read this you would have a chance to understand what I went through.
Today I tried telling you what I’m going to write here, if I can even write it. You’re going to hate me. You’re going to be disgusted with me.
Colin, the reason why you are so important to me is because my last relationship was a living nightmare. I can’t even write down his name. He abused me, Colin. We lived together, and he kept me emotionally tied to him. You helped me unpack in this apartment, but I invited you to stay those first few nights because I couldn’t sleep alone.
The scar on my temple that you love running your fingers across is the part of me I hate the most. It tears me apart inside to look at it in the mirror every day, but I can’t bear to take away the smile you get after you kiss its haunting line. He had his hands on my neck, and barely pressing the blade of his knife to my skin, dragging it across those eternal two and a half centimeters.
His fist seemed to find a home on my flesh – every single day he would strike my arms, my chin, my legs, my shoulders. He threatened me at gunpoint four times and with rope six, but I knew he wouldn’t kill me. He was too infatuated. He loved seeing the purple, blue, and green galaxies of swelling bruises that formed the next day. But in some sick way, I loved him back. I hate myself for it.
We lived in an apartment much different than this one. He chose the isolated room in the corner of the building so no one could hear my screams. They were his favorite noise, like music soothing him into a trance.
He never looked at me the way you do. He didn’t really love me like he claimed – he was just obsessed. He taught me that love is pain, love is feeling suffocated, love is one person strong and one person weak.
After two years, I finally found the strength to leave. I walked right out and spent a week and a half on the street until I was hospitalized with hypothermia after a nasty snowfall. I did not have enough courage to admit what I had been scarred by, blaming the hypothermia on bad exercise habits instead. They asked me about my bruises, too. I swapped the word pushed with fell and told them it was an accident going down the stairs.
Then I lived with my mother for a while. She knew something was wrong with me, but to this day she won’t dare ask. When I was living with her, I slipped into a horrible depression. I laid in my bed all day with the blinds down so the guest room was quiet at all hours. Tissues were useless because the tops of my sheets were constantly soaked anyway. They made me shiver, but I wouldn’t dare get up to change them. I was too weak, too fragile, too broken. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw his face again, his fist swinging towards my left cheek. Every time I opened my eyes, I stared at the door, tears falling over the bridge of my nose as I lay on my side, fearing each second that he would burst through that door and point his gun at me again. My mother resumed her regular job schedule almost immediately, leaving and coming home like clockwork, only coming in my room after delicately knocking to bring me small portions of leftovers.
She loves you, you know. She loves that you take care of me, just like I wrote.
And she was right.
You made life worth living again.
– Leila
Colin noticed that the ink began to bleed again towards the end of the letter, but the marks were not Leila’s this time – they were his own. He reached for the fourth note.
Colin –
What’s happening to me?
I don’t like time. I have lost so many hours thinking about time.
I don’t write the dates on these pages because I don’t like looking at time.
But I will tell you it has been three months. Three months since I wrote my last letter, and 128 days since I have been keeping these.
It’s come back, Colin.
My dreams, they’re repeating themselves. I see his green eyes staring at me hungrily. I can smell his horrible cigarette breath that clung to my lips after his forceful kisses.
I don’t know what to do. You’re right here with me, and we’re talking, but my secrets lie underneath my words.
– Leila
Colin –
I can’t stand your touch anymore.
It reminds me too much of him.
I know you’re not him.
But I can’t separate anyone,
anything from him now.
– Leila
There was one note left lying in the velvet, its number six tantalizing Colin’s eyes. He was not prepared for whatever message this single paper contained, whether it was as cryptic as the previous note or as painfully detailed as the third.
The lamp threatened to burn out and the moonlight had begun to fade, pink and purple streaks twisting in the sky, hinting at dawn. The amount of light did not matter, as long as he could still read this last letter.
Colin –
I have to go. There is no purpose for me here. I want to cry, I want to feel sadness as I write you this letter, I want the ink to smudge so much that you can’t read this and maybe hope that I’m still here.
I need to be able to feel again, to wake up and see sunlight instead of all of these clouds, fogging my vision.
I’m sorry I’m so weak, that I am unable to see eye-to-eye with you anymore. Maybe you didn’t notice, but to me it has become unbearable.
There’s nothing good left ahead of me here. I have been hanging on by my last thread of the rope for too long, and the string has finally broken. I only have one option now.
But there is one last thing I need from you before I leave. I need to see that warm look in your eyes, feel you run your fingers over my skin as though you are touching the most expensive silk in the world, taste the sweetness of your kiss linger on my lips like the mocha’s whipped cream one last time. That’s the last thing I need.
Colin’s eyes traced and retraced the final paragraph of the note.
Then he realized what he needed to do.
He ran down three flights of stairs to the parking garage, his feet nearly running faster than his own shoes. The next time he caught his breath, he was weaving through lanes of cars, deaf to the sound of their horns and the skidding of his brakes. The entire drive was a blur of red, green, and yellow, all morphing into white and the smell of antibacterial hand sanitizer as he burst through the door of the Emergency Room. He rushed past empty stretchers and operating rooms until he was face-to-face with the temporary nameplate that read the name mirrored on the notes in the wooden box, crooked on the shelf in her closet.
Colin opened the door, holding his breath. Leila’s chest rose and fell beautifully, a miracle spotlighted under the fluorescent bulbs on the ceiling, and Colin finally exhaled, in sync with her.
Her eyelids fluttered when he ran his fingers through her hair, tangled with dried blood. It was as though she could sense his presence, the pulse in his fingertips giving life to her.
A whisper escaped from her lips, barely audible over the regulated beeping of the heart monitor.
“I love you, and now you know.”
Then the only sound in the room was a single tone.
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