Letters | ✓

2 | two

Christopher Bang
Barrennjoey Road,
Sydney,
Australia.

March 12, 1960

Dear Christopher,
      It is but with respect that I trust that you had a pleasant day or night in heaven or hell. Is it hot, cold, or tepid where you are?

      In all honesty, it would be a tedious task to accept the reality that the more appealing setting is hot, but who am I to say? Maybe the frank angels added some heat just to accommodate the true, scaly creature behind your tender flesh.

      I pray that you do not seek to haunt me over a joke as such.

      But truthfully, for unknown reasons, I cannot help but somehow hold on to the finger of your passing, and point it to myself. And I am yet to hear the falsest report of your funeral. Your family members, to my knowledge, have never sought to contact me. And due to my father's restriction on our relationship, I was never gifted the opportunity to grow aquatinted with your peers.

      Christopher, as much as I succeed in convincing myself that I detest you, I would only stumble into a pit of self-hatred if I missed your funeral.

      Considering the dreadful gospel that you only fell victim to that accident because of me, because you came to visit me and was chastised by father to never return, I would hate not being there to bid my final goodbyes. He was just looking out for me, Christopher, because he is aware of how you have burdened me.

      But after truly dwelling on the thoughts that aim to add blame to my maiden name, I accept the reality that your passing simply cannot be my fault. Christopher, if you hadn't grown so distant ever since becoming the heir to your father's boat and fishing business; if you obeyed the impulse to communicate, rather than hurry past me on the horse that you promised would one day be ours, perhaps your story would have ended differently.

      If I was not ridiculed by the rumor that you were proudly making love with Anna by the river, mayhap I would not have finally obeyed my father and mother in looking up to the Seo household for the inclusion of marriage in my future.

      It is almost unfathomable, how individuals such as yourself always enjoy performing certain acts until the favor has been returned; as if they only craved the latter opportunity to be able to successfully uphold the label of a victim.

      I molded myself into a vessel to collect your waste for over thirty months, Christopher, saying my daily prayers with hope that one day, something of substance would fall from you and into me. And the one time that I close this vessel of my heart from the opening, you go fishing after consuming alcohol. Just to give the town's gossipers countless reasons to speak fire onto my head.

       I do hope that you have landed a permanent cell in hell, Christopher.

Sincerely,
A.