I had been working on this piece sporadically for quite some time now. Actually, ever since I started nursing. I wrote Gil's letter during my first week of pre-req in early October and I complimented it with Scarlet's after. It took me till tonight to finally finish it. I sacrificed my study time for this. But I really felt like finishing something. This is my first epistolary piece and I haven't decided if I'll keep continuing it. Anyway....
Dearest Dr. Gil,
I
painted my room the other day. If you were here, I’m certain it would have been
finished. In fact, if you were here, I’m sure you would've actually painted
while I boastfully and almost insolently splattered my walls to create my own
personal Jackson Pollock. Instead my walls fashion patches of white. I bet you
would hate the color. My room is a sunflower. Although right now, it looks like
a dying, withering sunflower. Like it’s been left in the waste basket while the
family is away on vacation. It really isn't so bad.
Maybe
I’ll visit you. But maybe not. I’m quite the busy person you know. Yesterday, I
slept a full eighteen hours while Napoleon licked wet paint off my walls and
the left-open lids. His fur was covered with patches of golden yellow and he
licked my face awake. Probably hungry for real food. With all that going on, I
simply have no time for anything. Therefore, how could I possibly see you? I
argued with myself whether you even wanted to see me.
When
I can feel myself miss you, I like to imagine you with your white coat, without
looking anyone in the eyes. Do you wear white coats? I would like to hope so.
My dreams would otherwise be shattered. I also like to hope that you’ve given
up haircuts and shaving. I’m sure you’re doing something to defy that place. I
can only imagine the resentment you’re cooking up inside you while you stay awake
way passed your bed time to receive your sufficient 2 hours of sleep for the
day. You must adore your time of solitude. There’s no way you’d be blending in,
cooperating, and making friends there. There’s no way. Am I wrong? I can only
see you taking your afternoon walks, staring off into nothing, speaking and
interacting with no one. Trapped in the confinement of your stubborn thoughts. I’ll
be damned if you tell me you’ve made even one friend. Or found any sort of
companion.
If
you were wondering, my room is no longer the wasteland that you hated it for.
In fact, due to my impetuous decision to paint my walls, I had emptied my room entirely.
No clothes. No pictures. No hoarded miscellaneous junk or furniture from flea
markets, thrift stores, or neighbors’ garbage cans. The only thing that’s ever
in here with me is my full-sized mattress on the floor and Napoleon. Occasionally
I would have one of the books that you gave me or pens and papers here with me,
but other than those, I am alone. I’m sure your room there is quite spacious
and neat, just like your old room here. Your things meticulously arranged with
you sitting on your desk, staring at your walls, probably contemplating your
next attempt to get yourself to hate you even more.
It
took me months to finally write this. Suppose I’d been waiting to hear from you
first. Hoping you’d beat me to it.
I saved the
frame, in case you’d been wondering. I took out your drawings and stashed them
away. Or threw them away. I can’t remember now. Either way, I didn’t want to
see the last picture you’d drawn and left me with. So instead I hung the empty
frame in front of my door.
Sincerely,
Scarlet
Dear Scarlet,
I
used to enjoy the defiance of my internal clock. Four in the morning was the
hour that God granted me to possess. It was gracious of him, really. I figured
it was probably why I’d turned out so goddamned queer. Why words come out of my
mouth unlike the way they do of those around me. Apart from you of course. I
believe you took a class on me. Which is strange because it never even seemed
like you had the interest or patience to take a class on anything. Anyway, it’s
four in the afternoon and I’m leisurely taking my two hour break before I must
attend a night lecture. It’s all so
dull. Watching my professors push up their glasses and fold their hands
together. Oftentimes I find myself making tight, straining fists until my palms
turn blotchy white and I watch them return to their normal pink. I knew I’d
been foolish doing something like this. Foolish for doing something for the
sole purpose of having the satisfaction that I could. I loathe it all, Scarlet.
My vocabulary has been translated to the medical Latin that every person in
this university pretentiously speaks. Consequent to this, I have the tendency
of declining group invitations and I relish in watching their faces semi-understandingly
scrutinize me.
Not even a
single hour belongs to me to write down something I’ve created or thought of
myself. My days are clinical, anatomical, and severe. Every day I come to
class, my craving for bone marrow flourishes. Not even the delicacy of animal bone
marrow. I see pictures of these opened bone marrows printed on my textbooks;
brighter than blood red. Thicker and frothy. And all my ponderings now belong
to concocting my own personal recipes for cooking and preparing a dinner for
one in my puny room. Drinking red wine. Taking bites of the marrow as if it’d
been caviar in another life. Without chewing or swallowing. Merely tasting for
a while till I’m ready to begin digesting and absorbing it as my own. This
delicate craving serves another reason why I avoid fitting in with everyone
here. I much rather imagine them cut up, and I, fishing for their bone marrow. Searching
for the froth of red. I imagine each of them tasting different from the next
and I wallow in the curious thoughts of knowing the differences in tastes.
In the
afternoons, in between classes, while walking around the campus with my books
tightly pressed in my hands beside me, I watch familiar and unfamiliar faces
and I carefully create a recipe out of each of them. Those whom I could
plausibly be fond of always turn out to be the successful recipes in my head. But
without fail, even those whom I dislike from distant observations turn out to
be an imaginarily decent meal. Sometimes I wish I knew where I’d gone. The
hollowness I found when I’d first arrived here mutated into what I should considerably recognize as a
disturbing anomaly. But unapologetically, as long as I’m here, I don’t give a
damn.
My God,
Scarlet, I used to know the tiny particles that swam in my head. But now my
appetite has changed and I miss walking into the bold color of your room while
you’re tangled by washed and unwashed clothes. I can only imagine being with
the paramount of your piles now. I still loved it anyway. Unlike my puny room
which is tidy and white. Inside my closet you’ll find where I’ve stored my
mountains of washed and unwashed garments, hats of every kind (no longer
classified from order of my most favorite to least). I should have taken with
me that picture frame you loved so much, even though I wouldn’t have had
pictures to place and replace in it bi-weekly. I know you think I hated the
messes you made and never cleaned, but the only picture I want to draw and frame
are your piles and that crimson color
red. Maybe I’ll try to find another frame that you might like. And maybe I’ll
draw your shoulder blade the next time I can breathe.
But for now
I’m out of time.
With love,
Gil.
