BETWEEN REVENGE AND LOVE

42

26/05/1995

Throwback...

Oh no, oh no, oh no.

Shaking, I clasp my arms around my chest, squeeze closing my eyes as if, with a bit of luck, their lids would fuse and never open again.

Please. Please, please. Don't tear.

I am bloodless, my body is bloodless, I am sobbing blood. It feels like it.

My ice cold feet, apart from the trembling that shatters through me, are motionless. Frozen. Like my hand clenched around my quill.

Choking back more tear deluges, I stare at the letter. At the letters. First at hers. Then at mine.

-"...I hope it won't be too much of a bother, but, I have to ask you to send me my things. Especially my clothes, my shoes most importantly, the black ones with the low heels, you know which ones I mean. The sooner you can do it the better. It's urgent, because next week I'll be needing them. So please hurry..."-

Swiftly my eyes fly down the paper, reading the message I read so many many times before.

-"...I'm sorry to have disturbed you, I wouldn't have written to you if it hadn't been really necessary..."- The last sentence reads, and yet again, her neat, yes, flawless handwriting, blurs before my eyes behind hurt tears.

She wrote me, she wrote me a letter, and what did she write about? About her shoes, her dammed shoes. She wants them back. It should be me she wants back. This letter should've been about her wanting back me. This feels wrong. Her fucking shoes. Why? Why is she doing this to me? Why do this, why not simply buy a new pair of bloody shoes. That wouldn't have shattered me anew.

To open this letter, to rip up the paper of its envelope, rushed, heart full of hope, rejoicing hope. Only to read its lines, falling so deep, hitting whatever is at the end of hopelessness. I am more than just hopeless. I am desperately trying to not fall apart.

My arms clasped around my chest aren't any help to me, nothing is.

Not sitting here, in the middle of the night. Not reading her letter, finding out that she wants all her stuff back, her shoes, not trying to be reasonable, to pack her stuff, to throw it into a package, not trying to write a letter to stick into that package.

No, nothing will, at all.

A catched breath, a wipe over my eyes to clear them of tears, followed by a short glance to my left, tells me that the clock shows four nineteen in the morning. A downward pan brings back my eyes to the letters, but this time to my own, leading me into further desperation.

-"...Hello Astoria..."-

That's all my churning mind came up with. That is all, it, I, can do. I can't do more. I am of no use.

I heave up one of my leaden arms, feel how my palm touches the coarse parchment as I bring down the tip of the quill onto the paper.

And I watch, I watch as the ink drains out, I watch, as a thick stain forms on the parchment. Fallen silent, I stare at it, see how the stain swallows up the words, my scrawly written words.

How everything disappears. First the "Astoria", then afterwards the "Hello".

All of it a black puddle.

. . .