Dear Pen Pal,
My mind creates a crime scene. I duck under the caution tape. There is no evidence to contaminate, no blood, no bodies, no trace of DNA; yet my stomach is squeamish. The absence of anatomy is unsettling. There within the outline of chalk laid friends who laughed and smiled and called me by my name. They are gone now and the case is cold.
I miss them.
Who?
My forensic friends. All of them.
The ones murdered by the monotonous motion of the earth on its axis, spinning them to dreams and dumping them out of bed over and over again until there were no more sleeps to share. Blinking doesn’t bring them back and it doesn’t make their projections fade away. They selfishly and spectrally haunt Hanoi, and everywhere else I’ve ever been.
I cannot pretend that it does not hurt to lose a temporary friend. They are precious and priceless to me, for in those shared, ephemeral moments, they were truly, physically, my only friends in the entire world. The practice of emotional detachment is exhausting. I tire of socially starting from scratch. I am a table for one so frequently that I lose my appetite completely. I am now conditioned for loss. I stare skeptically at empty hands held out for me to shake. How many see you soon’s never come true?
By the time they have walked away I have already begun to fade. Every new face they meet and greet after me replaces mine, blurs my features, distorts my laugh, erases my name. I feel the life leaving me as I transform into a memory. Would it hurt less if we had never met? Or would I long for a fleeting friend to lament?
No, the inevitable goodbye does not hinder the welcomed hello. I embrace and accept the outstretched hand enthusiastically, despite knowing that, too soon, I will be waving my own hand sorrowfully at the empty space they once inhabited. You see, it is a humbling epiphany to realize that it is not I, but they, who play as the protagonists of my story. They are the characters that dictate my plot. Their most subtle moments of humanity imperceptibly affect the trajectory of my life. Their laughs are lottery tickets. I would never have had a chance of knowing myself if I had not met them. All I seek within myself I find behind their eyes. They are what I wait for as I board the plane.
If you are reading this, whether we wandered together or bumped into each other for a moment in time, please know, that I am sad to have left you and am gorgeously happy to have met you…
I wish that this letter could have a happy end, but the tragic truth is that many of these travelers I will never see again. The projector of my mind flicks the photos of farewells across my face and suddenly I am nauseous, paralyzed by my mistake. As I watch my forensic friends leave me behind, time after time, I grimly grasp that I am the victim of the crime. I am the body lying on the floor traced by chalk. I am alone.
I stare at the ceiling with a rigor mortis twitch of the eye and with every whisper of goodbye I die again inside.
Love,
Ryan Anthony Dube
*Author’s Note*
I just want to take a second and express how grateful I am for how hard it has been to say goodbye to all of the amazing humans that I have encountered over these past three months. I do not take it for granted, and I genuinely hope that our worlds collide again soon.
A pyramid of ways for you to support the project:
The world inhabitants are mirrors to our own soul. Without whom we we scarcely would know our self. What you see in others exists in you. Let them see themselves in you. Love