LilyInteractive

Jan 1st. 7:33 AM.

Lately, I have been sharing my writing with more people. I find I have more room for vulnerability now that you’re gone, sharing is easier. 

No, living is easier. 

Lately, I have not been writing anything new. I find I have less pain now that you’re gone too. 

My broken ribs are healing, the steel-toed boot restricting my breathing has lifted. I no longer gasp for air, breathing is natural. I am human. 

I smile back at the girl sitting across from me on the train, shocked the accidental eye contact in central Sydney didn’t lead to a disaster containing the likes of public masturbation or a look that could kill. 

I miss you so much it hurts. 

I am falling in love with strangers on the street and admiring the crumbling buildings that I am romanticising under ‘eco brutalist’ claims all the while wondering about the narratives I am being slot into. 

Please, I pray, do not slot her into the crook of your neck. Do not lay her to bed on the softest sternum I have ever known. Do not feed her the sweet lies, dipped in honey, still dripping from my lips, as you drift to sleep tangled in each other’s warmth. Do your bodies fit like puzzles too? 

What do strangers think when I don’t smile at them? Is the man I swore at in the nightclub related to the girl I complimented in the bathroom? Everything is interconnected yet we are all so far apart. 

My head is pounding, my muscles are aching and my skin is burnt. 

I have spent the last week of the year dancing away everything too heavy to carry with me. 

I emptied my pockets of their loose change…

I exfoliated the secrets from my skin until they were bloody and raw… 

I knelt on my knees at the feet of deities I will never see again, I laughed and I cried while they kissed the top of my head and bent the rules of the universe to allow me the freedom I needed to wash my wounds… 

I removed my stained gown, my stained skin and gently left them behind, 

There are thousands of versions of me spilt across millions of minds, scattered through meetings and stories and parties and emails. The only thing I can do to drown it out-  is be so kind it ripples across the red string wrapped around the planet, and maybe the echos of my apologies and forgiveness will be heard. 

(I left them in the cemetery, the red of my blood replacing the red of the roses once blooming there.)

The only thing I can do is love myself as part of a fragmented whole. 

Our house has long since crumbled- the debris unrecognisable. 

The only thing I can do is say “Thank You.” when the toddler babbling next to me hands me a politely dribbled-on gift. 

I think I left something I didn’t want to, you see, underneath all the roses I spent countless afternoons tending to and laying amongst I would sprinkle little bits of myself into the fertiliser and pin maps to their thorns. 

The only thing I can do is acknowledge the world is full of stories and none of them will ever be true. 

(I always held out hope that someone would follow them home.)

( All someone has to do is overturn the rubble by the rusted door frame, I haven’t thought about you in so long that I forgot to cleanse myself of your touch. There is a blueprint amongst the dust. )

I don’t think I will ever be brave enough to retrieve it, 

Have you seen the deities?   

Jan 29. 9:29PM. 

I was once told I am hard to get but easy to keep, a statement I would more or less agree with. 

The greatest love stories of my generation were squashed by admirers with loose lips and not a bar of soap to their name to erase those 3 messily spilt words. White picket fences set ablaze around the houses of couples reading the same romance novels mere chapters apart. 

How do you know when it’s okay to say I love you?

It’s funny how things linger with no use. I hear someone giggle across the room and I flinch as if you were nearby and had somehow heard me think. You always seemed to know what was on my mind. 

I do not know when I am desired. Yet, I desire myself enough not to care. 

An ex-lover once told me that their best friend had described the difference between platonic and romantic love to them as “fated”. That the difference between friends and lovers was the stars. 

I think about you less than I ever have. I roll over in the morning and the other side of my bed does not feel empty. 

Some people say the stars are the children of the moon. The first time you asked if you could kiss me the moon could not see us but I swear I felt the stars in my blood. I could not tell if the butterflies in my stomach when your skin touched mine was the excitement of a budding friendship or stardust tying our fate together. 

“Can I kiss you?” The moon did not see you ask this, nor did she see how fast it made my heartbeat and muscles freeze. I tell her all my secrets but she does not know your name. 

I was scared to utter the breaking news of desire to her, she has seen storms and tsunamis and the end of every love I have ever had. Selfishly, I wanted to keep you a secret. 

I did not expect to fall for anyone, but to get to know you away from the prying and meddlesome eyes of the cosmic universe is all I wanted to do. 

I have spent countless nights whispering to the moon, she is the keeper of my darkest secrets and my lightest joys.

The salt of the ocean is tainted by my tears. 

Feb 5th.  11:27 PM. 

Sometimes when I lay awake at night and wipe my own tears, I think that maybe the little girl I did this for doesn’t get what she deserves after all. I stifle my sobs and let my ragged breaths silently shake through my body. Tonight, all I can think about is the cusp of womanhood tucked under the bed beneath me. 

Am I yearning for a time I can’t remember because deep down- I enjoyed it? Or is it because I didn’t have to heal from you yet? 

You die, all over again, all day, again, and again, and again. 

A casual sentence pulls at my heartstrings.

 I talk at a million miles a minute, yet your half of our inside jokes seem to trickle out of me like the slow motion of watching a car crash; I don’t talk about the time you accidentally greeted our landlord with a sparkly dildo and some KFC anymore. I leave requests for the story (a party favourite) unacknowledged. The silence of your absence drowns them out. 

There is trauma stuffing the love handles of my hips, it leaks into my veins and poisons my womb, cursed by things far worse than witches- leaving scars that cannot be kissed away. 

I want to burn down forests and scream my throat hoarse. 

I want to fall in love just so I can spend decades, sleeping and sobbing, sleeping and sobbing, sleeping and sobbing upon her chest. 

Every month I bleed generations of pain. 

There is no grave for me to rest on, to mourn on, to yearn on. The rest of the world has moved on. They have left me and my swimmers arms to bear the burden of your loss.

 I have carried your corpse with me for months. We have not made any new memories together. The smell of rotting flesh is curling up my nostrils, wafting up the cavern of my nose, infecting my brain. 

Recalling your laugh recalls the smell of rotting flesh. Recalling your touch, recalls the smell of rotting flesh. The good, the bad the ugly, all of it- we are rotting flesh. 

If I do not let you go, I will rot with you. 

Sirens do not sing, they wail. 

Goodnight, my love. 

I have burnt all my roses, letters and corpses. 

If you wish to find me, you would have done so long ago. 

There are no more trails to follow, I have not left any secrets or clues by the backdoor. 

My new garden is filled with lavender, my favourite colour is purple, my lover is dead and I am content. 

The price of happiness is beef stew, a breakup and a leather-bound journal.

The undead cannot rise, and they certainly cannot come knocking without your new address. 

If I just keep putting buzzwords in sentences will I sound foolish enough to trick myself into a smile? My throat burns, my tears taste like honey. 

Author’s Reflective Statement: 

This collection of 3 short letters written by an unnamed woman to an unnamed recipient was inspired by the common trope of starcrossed lovers being separated by a long distance and expressing their undying love through the painstakingly slow delivery system of the hand-written letter. 

What happens if the letters are never intended to be sent? What happens if those letters are addressed to an ex-lover, not a present partner? These letters are the answers to those questions. There is minimal focus on specific memories and events so any reader can put themselves in the position of the writer as she works through her grief and loss. There is also an underlying theme of being able to recover your own self-identity after it has been intertwined for so long with someone elses. 

Literary techniques such as repetition and imagery are frequently used throughout this piece to emphasise and extrapolate on universal human experiences that are often largely felt rather than discussed. Heartbreak of any kind can be quite tedious and monotonous especially when everyone in your life, including yourself, want you to move on. This can be experienced through the dating of the letters and the repetition of certain phrases. Alongside that, the feelings of any heartbreak can be quite dramatic and unique, I feel that the imagery used here encapsulates that as much as possible. This piece was started and developed from an in-class writing exercise in the first week of tutorials and strengthened with some dramatic one-liners from my diary and a backstory about an imaginary couple I constructed in my head.