Letter
by Anon 4
It’s a night. Irene’s awake though it’s a night. Reasonable, she thinks, because the night is a lot more real than the day anyway. In her hand is a pen and under it is a paper—one she ripped very carefully from one of her notebook. Its white, but it looks blue-ish under the lack of light in her room. Empty. Good old Eddie, with his bright smile and little kids eyes, told Irene to write a letter once. Heartache is a bitch, he said that day, under the sun that made him look too beautiful to talk about something like heartache. The only way to fight it is to write it out of your chest. Irene said, “I don’t think that’s how it works Ed, because what are letters anyway?” A means of communication. Like a telephone call. Or a text. She thinks it’s silly, dealing heartaches by writing it in a letter (where would she send it off to?) and the idea is too simple for the grand, massive, spectacular Eddie. (He is kind of sentimental sometimes, but not to that extent, Irene thinks). Irene doesn’t write letters. Irene never wrote letters, because she never needed to. Other than she finds it hard to say something she has in mind, she always thinks action speaks louder than words anyway. But Irene is Irene, and Irene always does what everyone told her in the end. Or maybe it has something to do with her being awake at this hour and the dull ache throbbing nonstop in her skull. In her chest. And all over. “Hello,” she begins in her letter. “Neil, it’s me. “I can’t sleep these days, because the neighbor downstairs keeps having a very loud party. Every night.” Irene pauses. “I think he’s the type of a person who falls in love every night. There’s nothing wrong with that, I guess. I used to be that kind of person,” she stops before she could write “with you.” (She did write it, though she scratches it so hard, in the end, you can’t read what’s left of it.) Irene rests her head on the surface, closing her eyes. Everything is so still and quiet, save from the traffic outside her window, far down the street thirty-eight story below. She writes again, “no party tonight though. Maybe his heart broke.” “How’s the weather like over there? It’s quiet here tonight, and cold. You were right about New York. It’s not a place for me—this place is not a place for someone who likes to be alone. It’s too big. Or am I just too small?”
