Dear ,

I don’t mean to start off on the wrong foot, but mentioning your name, forming you like a tangible person who I can send a letter to that will be read, would be besides the point of writing you this letter. I hope you understand. I know you do; as engraved in my mind as you are.

I guess I’d like to tell you, even though you don’t care to listen, that I’m doing better now. Not as good as I’d like, but better than I was when I sunk deep into my couch every night either because of the weight of your chest pressed into mine when we were not fucking on the couch, or because of the vacuum you left when you turned away afterwards, leaving me to watch your back disappearing over and over again into the bright night light in the hallway.

Did I already mention that, since you disappeared, this guy showed up who’s quite different from you, although he has the same magnetic look in his eyes and the curve of his right ear bends just like yours. He smells different. Like coconut oil and laurel, less salty. He calls me when he says he will, can you believe that? I couldn’t. Until he did. And then, still, I didn’t. I expect time to pass without him giving me any sign of life. Any solace. Any gesture of care. Like you. And my brother. And my father. And my grandfather, who I never really knew. Like my father. And my brother. And like you.

He took me to his favorite Chinese restaurant last Friday evening. Asked me why it’s hard for me to trust him. For half a second, I thought about lying, pretending it’s not hard for me at all. He noticed. I flinched. My body started shaking from the waist up to my hands. I dropped my beer. He said it was okay. It was okay. It was okay. I told him about you. And my brother. And my father. And my grandfather, who I never really knew. He nodded. Listened. Understood. Or at least it looked like it. I hope you never meet.

Afterwards, in bed, I laid my head on his shoulder while picturing Kandinsky’s Composition VIII, writing it’s lines and shapes on his bare belly with my right index finger. My hair fanned out on his chest. It still smelled like beer. It was okay. It was okay.

It’s funny how your fading face reappears whenever I wake up to the physicality of his being. Unbrushed teeth. Nails half covered with chipped black polish. Puffy bags under eyes that have seen 42 years of this world gone by. Then, especially then, my oceanic heart visits the remnants of our pirate ship again, swaying on waves of doubt and confusion, wrecking my wood in a world of in-betweenness, full of endless impossibilities. And of never being-shoreness. Not having to face the ache of mourning what is lost, because it was never found to begin with.

If the ghost of you reappears above the horizon, floating towards me with inimitable uncertainty, I let myself become heavy, flood my being with water. Until my belly overflows. I stay under water for as long as I can hold my breath. Until darkness sets in, starting to blur my vision from the outside in, instead of the other way around.

I grasp for air. Memories (or visions?) of myself resurface. Searching, scanning, trying to feel my way to your pulse. Meanwhile, you wrap me in a gritty blanket made of a thousand different, but ultimately the same, comments on theoretical physics, and sew them all together with kisses on my forehead and pats on the back of my head. I feel my body disappearing with every abstraction you throw at me. Every sentence formed between your lips feels like two hammerings chisels taking turns, rhythmically hollowing out my sense of self like you’re excavating a cave inside my bones.

You dig and dig and dig until it tires you out, eventually, and you stop without taking notice. The only possible position to hold now is flat with our backs on the floor. We lie-down next to each other, not holding hands like normal people would do. We lie still, lifeless, like new shoes in a box divided by milky white paper, never to touch, only to see, never to feel if the other is real. Oh how I miss not having you near.

A.