Dear B

I can’t sleep

I take a deep breath, look around and light another cigarette on the balcony. He is not here, so I can smoke freely and think without any interruptions.

I open once more your last letter. I could read it endlessly, savoring each word, each phrase, and the silences in between. 

It is dark and cold outside. The snow is gently covering my uneasy solitude.

I am writing in a language and living in another one, while rolling sarma for the feast that will never happen.

When we met last time in the city, I couldn’t say a word.

I remained mostly silent, sitting in the living room of the spyurqahay nouveau riche woman who had invited us for coffee. I didn’t like her that much. She bored me with her stories, her cookies and the uninteresting paintings hanging on her walls. She had many questions and you were answering patiently.  I was completely mesmerized by your voice and gestures. In my mind, I was destroying one by one all the ugly paintings in the room.  I wanted to scream and tell her to stop invading, to stop fixing the broken. I don’t do well with well-intentioned people. V. tries to reason with me, make me understand, accept.

But I choose brokenness.  It leaves me sore and alive.

Later you asked me why I came. What a superfluous question! – I thought.

I couldn’t answer. Instead, I continued staring at the walnut tree outside the window.

Silence

My stories were well preserved under that tree. The letters were hidden in the old teapot that no one had ever dared to open. The revelations inside were a translation of an alienated language with waves of excruciating pain.

We read those letters separately, over and over, in our unspoken dialect.

The letters kept the story alive and helped me bear the smell of his intrusive body.

Another cigarette and he will be back. I dive into silence, more and more, these days.

The coffee cup is holding all the pain. I can read yours one day, mine is too revealing. It hurts too much.

Without uttering a word, without touching, I wish you could sit with me for a while, somewhere outside,

without disruption

gazing into the many unsaid things concealed at the bottom of the cracked cup.

L.