Fifth Letter

V.

late, very late

Dearest Winter,

Someone asked me today if I was alright. I said yes. I was thinking about the way you hold a cup, both hands, always, even when it isn't hot anymore, and I said yes, fine, completely fine, and I meant none of it. Lying really isn't as easy as it would be, I am writing this letter again to express my most sincere desires.

Here is what fine looks like from the inside, it looks like knowing exactly where you are in a room at all times without appearing to look. It always felt like branding it in my head, it's the particular rhythm of your laugh and then lying awake just to replay it. It looks like wanting so badly and holding so still that the wanting becomes a kind of discipline, a practice, it's perfecting a thing you don't even have to attain, something you get better the more time, the longer you do it, and hating, just slightly, how good you've become.

I do not want to be good at this anymore. That is new. For months I was almost comfortable in it, almost grateful for the clean uncomplicated ache of it. Now it feels less like weather and more like a door I am standing in front of, hand raised, not knocking.

I don't know what is on the other side of that door.

I am terrified of finding out.

But I am more terrified of never finding out.

faithfully, and less patiently than before