An open letter:180 days of her

To her, whom it concerns,

The winter feels close to me here; sensually, dangerously close. I know that particular screaming within the confines of my skull will do nothing to grieve her passing. A better place, a quieter place. I must, simply have to, blood-let these words to paper. Only then, can I sleep with curtains gaping open-and embrace the glaring moon.

We started off whimsically, like the story-line of an 80's Rom-Com, directed by a functioning alcoholic. She lived oceans away in a land I couldn't visualize and couldn't understand. Life is busier on those insomniac streets-or at least, they pretend it to be. The existential pains of living almost eek from their pores, a paradoxical perfume. She spoke in rhymes, as if pentameter meant anything in a terse time. She enveloped my heart by way of bromides that she borrowed from  Bartlett's. If anything, I was just too drunk to venture beyond the shallow wade.

2 years after a more benign moon-lit walk-she was a vision before me. Even then, she punctured her prose with virulent reality-unacceptable to my opiate mind.I knew well, in the unexplored depths of 'run away', that she would amount to another fever dream-more phantom than companion. Oh, but the mountain-tipped trees were fragrant with a believing and lusting breeze. I walked inexplicably into quarantine, incapacitated by own decree. And this reverie remained-septic fissures notwithstanding-as her ship sailed and I was left wondering. She once told me to look to the East, understanding eyes sealed, to feel the sea-swell of her arrival. That a week, a month, was but the undulation of one wave collapsing upon another. At least, that is what I made of those ululations as the waves swept her away.

And so, across the molten waves, we were bound by telephone cord and Gordian dreams. I never trusted her as I couldn't ready my unsteady hands or trace her wavering glare. Gossamer, was the touch of her hand at the advent of day. I wished to sew and strengthen those weaves, but trembled violently. We loved with a love that no one envied her and me. Such was idle conversation at battlefield's edge-renting the clothes of everything else-so that we were no more naked. I suppose it was something and these words would've been dressed and adorned differently not long ago. It is painful to think that interned dreams could walk the Earth for one night and then choosing to stay-simply remain.  But the dead stay dead and this eulogy will soon pass.

I wonder how long to linger by her grave-how long to sing cryptic goodbyes to her hollow crypt. Vagrant strength bids adieu to me, but with these plaster words, I'll seal her sepulcher and say my last farewells.

I would say I'd see her again, but I believe in no such afterlife...Except that of one wave collapsing upon another and bringing a new love back to me.

Goodbye.

-Cameron