Dear you,
Last night, after writing you, I came across a desolate letter, abandoned within the pages of a book I am yet to read. A letter that rested for years on my bookshelf and which seemed to be the only one remaining from a chain of letters between two people who, by the look of it, seemed like lovers, but who could only be lovers in novels.
The letter reads as follows, and I will leave you to it.
“Dear Bea,
I received your last letter with so many words on my lips, words that I have once wished to write delicately. I felt exactly like a writer who was in a frenzy to write what was on his mind and bleeding pen as fast as he could, as if in fear of losing what he longed for in so many years, now that it has come again: words.
For nights on end I wondered if I should write you back with an answer to your question, knowing that no mysteries or vague answers could convince you nor alleviate your desire to know. I knew you always spoke of me as a writer, but I had always been full of anxieties to disappoint you should you ever show up as a character in the books I write. But knowing you, and how you were always faithfully mesmerized with words yet feared them (perhaps a stronger word exists, like a word-phobia), it would only be fair to give you what could sooth your urge, or create an even more burning desire with words.
This is how you, my real Bea, would be in my fiction:
‘She sat in a corner of an old café, which smelled of old books, perhaps because the bookshop that had once been there decades in the past always remained there somehow. And she believed it, because, as she would put it, books never die; once they are placed in a shelf somewhere, they always retain their place for years and years to come. Their smell would never go away, because it was the smell of words, characters, and real life simply put into fiction. Everything about books was real to her. Books were pieces of reality put together, and these pieces would always be real to someone.
She rested there, hunched up and lifting her legs on the chair next to her, unaware of life passing by her and time going somewhere else. Her clocks were ticking anti-clockwise, because she believed reading gives you life on your life. Time, to her, only existed when she finished the last pages of a book and stared at the world around her, realising that nothing changed, that the world passed a book’s shattered ending without looking it in the eye and feeling its broken pieces.
While reading, she would forget her coffee on the table until it was cold, fixing her eyes only on words and her lips on the way words were let out of her, like magic. She would gasp in a low voice, almost a whisper, if a character dies without a warning, or when misery casts its shadows on a once peaceful life. She would feel her hands and body shiver when she reads about her favourite character being soaked under the rain, without a shelter to find. And she would, always silently, sob tears alone in that café corner while reading the very last line of her books. Unknowingly, she would sometimes embrace that book, close her eyes which are full of words, and rest for a few minutes, as if trying to catch her breath to be able to go back to reality.
But, above all, she wouldn’t stop reading. She was okay with being alone, and her idea of alone was different than those who did not read. With that, she never felt alone, ever in her life. And I was there, like one character in all her books, watching her, knowing that my gaze would not stir her, because, after all, I wasn’t her favourite character. I wished I could be, but I never was. I was in the shadows and she was in the light. She sometimes spoke to me but merely as a stranger in the novel not as a friend, let alone a lover.
I was fine with this, as long as she kept reading. Her readings were my own refuge, to be in her thoughts, if I am not ever going to be in her life. I was her fiction, and she was my reality. But alas, like two parallel worlds, we would never cross paths.’
You, Bea, have always been there, in my books, and if you ever look closely, you will find me, too, there, looking at you from a corner in the street or from behind the windowpanes of old shops. But there will always be only one chance for us to meet in every book, and that chance will never be real.
Yours truly,
D”
TBC
Last night, after writing you, I came across a desolate letter, abandoned within the pages of a book I am yet to read. A letter that rested for years on my bookshelf and which seemed to be the only one remaining from a chain of letters between two people who, by the look of it, seemed like lovers, but who could only be lovers in novels.
The letter reads as follows, and I will leave you to it.
“Dear Bea,
I received your last letter with so many words on my lips, words that I have once wished to write delicately. I felt exactly like a writer who was in a frenzy to write what was on his mind and bleeding pen as fast as he could, as if in fear of losing what he longed for in so many years, now that it has come again: words.
For nights on end I wondered if I should write you back with an answer to your question, knowing that no mysteries or vague answers could convince you nor alleviate your desire to know. I knew you always spoke of me as a writer, but I had always been full of anxieties to disappoint you should you ever show up as a character in the books I write. But knowing you, and how you were always faithfully mesmerized with words yet feared them (perhaps a stronger word exists, like a word-phobia), it would only be fair to give you what could sooth your urge, or create an even more burning desire with words.
This is how you, my real Bea, would be in my fiction:
‘She sat in a corner of an old café, which smelled of old books, perhaps because the bookshop that had once been there decades in the past always remained there somehow. And she believed it, because, as she would put it, books never die; once they are placed in a shelf somewhere, they always retain their place for years and years to come. Their smell would never go away, because it was the smell of words, characters, and real life simply put into fiction. Everything about books was real to her. Books were pieces of reality put together, and these pieces would always be real to someone.
She rested there, hunched up and lifting her legs on the chair next to her, unaware of life passing by her and time going somewhere else. Her clocks were ticking anti-clockwise, because she believed reading gives you life on your life. Time, to her, only existed when she finished the last pages of a book and stared at the world around her, realising that nothing changed, that the world passed a book’s shattered ending without looking it in the eye and feeling its broken pieces.
While reading, she would forget her coffee on the table until it was cold, fixing her eyes only on words and her lips on the way words were let out of her, like magic. She would gasp in a low voice, almost a whisper, if a character dies without a warning, or when misery casts its shadows on a once peaceful life. She would feel her hands and body shiver when she reads about her favourite character being soaked under the rain, without a shelter to find. And she would, always silently, sob tears alone in that café corner while reading the very last line of her books. Unknowingly, she would sometimes embrace that book, close her eyes which are full of words, and rest for a few minutes, as if trying to catch her breath to be able to go back to reality.
But, above all, she wouldn’t stop reading. She was okay with being alone, and her idea of alone was different than those who did not read. With that, she never felt alone, ever in her life. And I was there, like one character in all her books, watching her, knowing that my gaze would not stir her, because, after all, I wasn’t her favourite character. I wished I could be, but I never was. I was in the shadows and she was in the light. She sometimes spoke to me but merely as a stranger in the novel not as a friend, let alone a lover.
I was fine with this, as long as she kept reading. Her readings were my own refuge, to be in her thoughts, if I am not ever going to be in her life. I was her fiction, and she was my reality. But alas, like two parallel worlds, we would never cross paths.’
You, Bea, have always been there, in my books, and if you ever look closely, you will find me, too, there, looking at you from a corner in the street or from behind the windowpanes of old shops. But there will always be only one chance for us to meet in every book, and that chance will never be real.
Yours truly,
D”
TBC
