4 minute read
LETTER
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.
Advertisement
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.
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.”
A poorly smudged writing underneath it says, or is it because you’re not here with me?
If she squeezes her eyes hard enough she feels like she can see Neil’s face. Childlike eyes, boxy grin. He looks a lot like Eddie, and when she met him the first time she has to stop and ran because she thought she had seen a ghost. On this night, Neil’s face feels so vivid and clear and real in her head, but at the same time, dreamy, and little details are missing from his face and she suddenly feels so scared at the thought of forgetting Neil’s face. She widens her eyes and starts scribbling again, this time in a sense of urgency and desperation she couldn’t help.
“You told me what love feels like one time,” she presses her pen so hard, she feels like the paper will rip at one point, “you told me that love feels amazing and it makes you feel like walking on the air and clouds and cotton candies and sunshine and rain and nice days and you can’t get me out of your mind,” she writes.
“You can’t get me out of your mind, you said, you said that’s love. Well, I can’t sleep because I can’t get you out of my mind tonight and I can see your face so clear and I can’t stop, I can’t stop even if I want to and I don’t know if I like it, Neil. I must’ve loved you so much. So much. This is love, isn’t it? It hurts, it’s scary. I want to stop I can’t sleep! I can’t sleep! I can’t sleep!”
Her writing had become shaky and big and really ugly on the paper and Irene can’t stand it, she can’t stand looking at it, so she scratches it—everything, from the beginning, and she keeps scratching and scratching it until the paper is nothing but black and not as smooth as before. And she’s panting and crying and there’s a lump in her throat that chokes her until it’s hard to breathe.
In the end, she only writes, under the messy lines she so passionately drew, a small and shaky,
She won’t write any letter in the future, she decides and ends it at that.
35
#ToExperience
experience more and more
edcom.fib.uns.ac.id
