Lives through letters

Various contributors take us on an epistolary journey through moments across lifetimes

To you, so many years in the future, I will tell you about my final year at university:

Concentration, eddies and flows

Drifting away, as so much rain. The future, I did once treasure; Now bleak and void to my hurt mind.

Cacophony ringing my Eardrums to pain, the task returns. Panic floods all, each neuron

And every muscle, screaming, wounded. This weight I bear, of futures

Uncertain and, so terrifying Drags, chains, buries, a young man’s mind. Escape is all I cling to, crave Hope shines, a light cresting over A distant, pure, horizon that I drag myself, ever toward.

I can do this and do it well.

This article arranges various letters as a snapshot of the relationships we foster with ourselves, our partners, and the very world we inhabit. My White Bauhinia: There was a time when I still believed you’d heal, bloom as you used to; that the dark formalin leaching away from your wounded corolla would crystallise into the petal you’d lost. – Unlike the paper mache Grandpa plastered onto you, deceiving nobody but himself into anticipating your many future springs. For three years, I’ve been tending you with silent elegies; three years, cleansing you with forlorn tears. But I stop now, because I realise, however desperately I wish my tears fertilising your impossible beauty, they are but noxious acids eroding you further. Time and undeserved happiness have taught me to forget your pain I vowed to share. Your nightly lamentations are far buried in the hardened earth echoing like mutterings of wistful forest elves, but I cannot dig them up without the courage I’d lost – lost from seeing, that night, Grandpa grinded his heels against your receptacle bleeding vanquished hopes. I know he trampled on your maliciously like how he tears wings o butterflies and sets fire to their pupa. But the next day, sitting across the dinner table, I didn’t dare utter a word. If I were only younger. If my heart were only closer to the wild truth. But my faithless eyes are blinded with transience, cowardly lips filthied with the plea of impermanence. Every night, I dream of myself knelt crying before your spectre: you are gone

Never forget what you were in this place. Strive to overcome.

Thomas Niven

To buy:

- Milk

- Tea bags

- Sugar

- Biscuits

Don’t forget the milk, I need it to subdue to taste of the ca eine. It soothes my swells, cuts and bruises from the stings of my past - soaking me until I become numb in the opaque liquid of purity. Yet, you need to remember not to leave milk out too long though, I don’t want it to go sour. I don’t want to go sour either. Don’t forget about me and leave me too long or I’ll become engulfed by the curdled tanginess – a congealed amalgamation of a forgotten past.

I once heard that tea bags were made o the dirt of the floor of the factories that they’re made in. There’s something in that though - I want to be moulded out of dirt. Coerce my worthlessness into a bitter taste, boiling to the touch. Mould my grime into something desirable, worth the interest of others.

Stir the sugar enough so it dissolves. Disintegrate the granules so I don’t leave an indescribable taste in someone’s mouth – make me unseen, unheard and unfelt. Buy the biscuits as a talking point, do you prefer Bourbons or Custard Creams? Neither, I just want to keep your company as long as possible. Take the tin of both biscuits – just stay. Forgetting about the sharp stab of pain in your teeth as you move on to your fourth biscuit, as you ask so really, how are you?

I just need a cup of tea.

Grace Wakefield

A letter never sent, leftover information in

And the sun aches just a little more

It’s like my list of baby names

It lengthened while you were here

But now I read through

And see each child has your eyes

I still remember your phone number by heart

Even though it’s deleted from my phone

I still crave your mum’s Mac and cheese

After months of not being home

Nicole Longsta

Image credit: Victoria Cheng books@palatinate.org.uk