Letter: January 20 - Blue Flowers

My darling,

I’ve spent the day thinking about the letter I wrote yesterday, about your reaction. Did you read it, I wonder. Nervously opening the envelope while you were still in the elevator, or maybe you threw it away, before you’d even arrived back home, the envelope intact, or maybe you tore it up, the pieces in the trash can out in the hallway, along with all the other pieces of paper, advertisements, scribblings, newspapers, everything that nobody wanted, or maybe you just left the envelope still closed on the table, the day going by and the envelope on the table, silent. I’ve spent the day thinking. And if you really did read it, if you arrived home, opened the envelope and read it, what happened? Did you hear me, I wonder? Did you understand even the most unexpected parts of my narrative, did you understand, I wonder? Did it bring us closer? Did those memories, something of ours, return to existence, or is it maybe only me, all me, the desire, the writing, the reading. Perhaps I call out to you, and you go on, never looking back. And I keep on thinking whether there was something that could have caught you, there, where you are, wherever you are now.

It is also possible you didn’t like it, that maybe you hate me even more now. That I made you recall our last day, our trip to the rental place, forced you to remember and maybe you don’t want to. Maybe you’d just rather keep looking ahead into the future, to whatever’s coming. Believing that separation is an ending, not an eternal moment, as I would like to believe.

You are someone different, someone who walks down the street without ever looking back. Maybe you hate me now, even more, and you’ll never read this second letter, maybe you’ll never read anything of mine ever again. But all the same, there will always be the hope that you’ll return in, who knows, a whole week, or even months, years, to the envelope you’d forgotten, tossed away somewhere, weeks, months, years, until, who knows, one day, a careless lapse, a slip, an unthinking moment, and this letter will be opened, and all the world that it contains will open, too. It was saying to you the whole time: Remember? And even if I’m wrong, and you throw them away, one after another, resolved, unforgiving, throw away this one and those still to come. Yes, because there will be others. How many? I don’t know yet. But there will be others, every day, in your mailbox, every day, waiting for you, the envelope closed with all its possibilities. Then even if you throw them away, one after another, there will always be another closed envelope and the expectation of the closed envelope’s own language.

But I’d rather imagine that things aren’t like that. I prefer something much simpler: you as you are now, sitting in an armchair, or on a dining chair at the table, or on the sofa, with this letter and a cup of coffee. The phone ringing. Your hands and this letter. Only this. The minimum necessary. I’ve always thought it’s necessary to be uncomplicated when there is something important to say. Is there really something important to say? you must be asking yourself. A revelation, a secret? I answer yes, there are things you don’t know, there are always things one doesn’t know, however transparent the other person might be. However quiet, there is always something unexpected, something that might surprise you, and make you smile or suffer.

A small revenge. What is revenge, after all, but a strange declaration of love, somebody taking revenge is always somebody who’s saying: Separation, separation is a half-finished gesture and your name is repeated over again. Your name, unfinished, suspended in my mouth, that’s revenge, a love that never ends.

So that was what happened, a small revenge, yesterday. I’m saying it was yesterday, but it could have been earlier, any other day following your absence, and so I’m saying, because I’m the one telling the story: yesterday I went back to the rental place. I tell you this almost in secret, fearfully perhaps. I went to the rental place for the first time since that day; there was the same door, the same movies, the same man behind the counter, but something had changed, something in me. I picked up that exact same movie from last time, remember? The one I suggested—was I trying to tell you something? But you didn’t want to see; you grabbed my arm so hard the pressure of your fingers lingered for a long time. That movie, that character, the actor who does or doesn’t look like you. But it’s all the same now, and I got the movie. Was that cruel? Perhaps. And it was like I was betraying you—that’s strange, isn’t it? It was like I was deceiving you, like I was taking revenge, or worse, like I was taking revenge and smiling about it. See how everything’s changed? I felt happy, a disturbance, an excitement; I was practically running, glowing, in the middle of the street, feeling like I’d stolen something valuable and was getting away without anybody noticing, unharmed. And I was smiling, glowing, for no reason at all.

I could tell you that when I arrived home, I put the movie in the machine. I pressed Play, and out came a whole unfurling of scenes with that actor and that character, everything you wouldn’t acknowledge, which could have been you. And I could say that I spent that whole time in front of the television feeling happy at all those things that would have made you smile and suffer. I could say all this—but no. I could even lie—but no. For some reason, the movie alone awoke the sense of some danger, an unspecified fear. So I put the disc back in the case, closed it, and there it stayed for a long time on top of the table, while I sat in front of the empty noise from the television, the television devoid of images. My small act of revenge, infantile and foolish. I could lie. But no. Because revenge is never enough, like love. What’s the difference?

All that nonsense of going to the rental place to pick up the movie was only the start of the things I didn’t do, and which I could do to hurt you, to wound you. I could confirm so many things, things you’re afraid of, couldn’t I? I could tell you, for example, every detail, every minute detail, of the clothes I was wearing—that red dress, remember? You always liked seeing me in red, it looked so good on me, the dress that left my back bare, the dark red dress, carmine red, my back bare, my black hair untied, which you used to compare to a dark curtain, like night? I could tell you all the details about that red dress, the untied hair, the way you liked me to wear it, isn’t that how it was? And I could, for example, tell you I washed my hair with the finest essences, the finest oils, spent long hours in front of the mirror. I put my makeup on carefully, my body still damp, perfumed myself all over, as though going on a date, as though for a lover, my body gentle and precise. Then I put on the sandals with the straps, the ones with the extremely high heels, the ones that after a few hours make my feet and legs hurt horribly and that I only wore to please you, remember? I would do anything to please you. The sandals you liked so much because you knew what discomfort they caused me, the straps squeezing my toes and the heels on which I struggled to keep my balance. And so I tell you all this, my body perfumed, the dress, the makeup, the sandals wobbling around the house, the noise of my footsteps on the floorboards when you arrived and I went to let you in, the noise of my footsteps and my nervous breathing until I got to the door and opened the door and saw you, smiling, as though all of it were obvious, the fact that I should be getting myself ready for you. But this time I wasn’t walking toward the door and you weren’t waiting for me and thinking it obvious; there was only me and the carmine-red dress and the movie on the living room table, the movie I didn’t fully watch but its existence, its presence, was enough to mean something. A small act of revenge, a confidence, because the other person, however submissive, however transparent, always has something unexpected within them, something that might make you smile or suffer.

I could tell you about all that preparation, the dress, the perfume, the movie I didn’t watch and everything that didn’t happen afterward. Yes, because it wasn’t only the movie. It wasn’t just the movie, that small revenge, infantile and foolish, but everything that came afterward, that moment that never should have existed. So I’m telling you that contrary to what you might be imagining, I didn’t go out afterward. No, I didn’t go out or walk from bar to bar, along the streets, through the darkest places in the city. No, I didn’t offer myself up, ready and perfumed, a new smile, an invitation. No, I didn’t wrap myself around other bodies, didn’t smell other perfumes, didn’t kiss other mouths, nor did I bring my face close to another face, to the roughness of another face. This is how it was. I didn’t run down the stairs, or dance, or sing or shout that none of it mattered, I didn’t smile at other lips, or approach other men, or feel desire, or allow others to desire me, obedient, happy, no, I didn’t run my fingers over another skin, the tips of my fingers, nor the softness of my skin over another skin, I did none of this. I didn’t dance all night, the day dawning in other mouths, no, I didn’t wake up in other beds, or in my own bed with sheets wrapping around other bodies, rumpled sheets, no, I didn’t condemn you, nor did I turn my back on you and smile, among other lives, other breaths, no, I didn’t feel the weight of another body, of another hand, or a different rhythm of breathing on the back of my neck, no, I didn’t cry or suffer in other arms, I didn’t open my body to other eyes, other revelations, nor did I undress nervously in the middle of the living room or beside another bed, no, I didn’t take off my red dress, or any item of clothing that you liked, just for you, for someone else, didn’t untie my hair the way you preferred it, for someone else, or feel the caress of other words in my ear, no, I did none of this. I didn’t run down the stairs, or through any dark corner of the city, I didn’t smile at the first stranger, didn’t offer myself up with my gaze alight or walk listlessly in the opposite direction, no, I didn’t allow other hands on my skin, which you said was so soft, other hands and another voice talking about the softness of my skin and the curtain of my hair, no other voice wrapping itself around mine, another caress, no, I did none of this, all the small revenges I might have taken, and writing to you now, and making you smile or suffer. But no. I did none of this. I just closed my eyes and sat here.

So why all this? you might be thinking. This laying out of what I did not do, this inventory of revenges aborted. A very subtle kind of punishment? A declaration of love? I don’t know, maybe just a declaration of weakness to make you smile or suffer, or maybe a way of wanting you, of reaching you, to establish a link between us, an impossible link, which I set up only because I’m here, because there’s this distance between what I write and what you read, because it’s been days since I’ve washed, since I’ve combed my hair, since I’ve left the house.

A.