Dear You

Seven seas and millions of miles of rainforest, as far as the eye can see awash with white desert sand, thousands of acres of farmland stretching through and through this town, and yet me, I simply lie here, hands behind my head, words escaping nowhere, eyes unknowingly blind. Sitting for hours upon more with a Beat Bop in the sweat ridden palms of my shaking hands, my ears tuning the Earth’s noises out, focusing solely on the beat of the bop, and my eyes gaze with no distractions at which corner of the white plastic ball I will hit, twist, pull, or flick next. “Bop it!” the voice screams behind the mind-numbing beat of the white toy, I take a deep breath in a visceral reaction as my hand draws back in towards my body and thrusts straight towards the middle circle. I hit it with force with my right hand. My left hand is holding the handle on the left side of the ball, it is growing weak as the game groans on in repetitive beats, the force of the hit toward the Bop knocks the white ball out of the clawing grip of my left hand. A white swirl of sweat and toil hurls towards the floor with an American voice shouting, “You lose!” My heart stops, my eyes close, my hands freeze dead. Silence floods over me as I raise my hands towards my head and place them gently over my eyes; it’s only a matter of time before I know… “You scored… One hundred and seventy-five!”
“Fuck!” I fall back deeper into the dark red chair I grow on, “Not again, I’ll never get passed one fucking eighty!” I scream as I sink deeper. Another sip of coffee and try again. Pull my wet hands together towards my face and cool them down with a blow from the dry entices of my burning lips. Some three hours steer swiftly past my mind and my eyes and disappear into the wind or over the clouds or beyond the horizon, somewhere I’ll never find them again. And the Beat Bop lies in two pieces on the floor. My hands are dripping. My mouth is ejecting fury. I stare wishfully at the ceiling, waiting for the day it will melt solemnly into the palm of my hand and I will climb over the view beyond it and there in his humble self will stand Adam. He will wear a small white vest with a picture of my face printed on the front, he will have drawn an arrow red with the purest of blood seeping through its cracks and into his heart and demoting his every thought to a single picture of my face, a single open jaw, and in the reflection of my eyes he will see himself, he will see the kitchen counter, he will see not his white vest nor his torn jeans nor his red, white and black Air Jordans, he will see bare purity, not only upon himself but also upon his new friend, as he will be slouched over the counter, legs half bent, arms out straight, teeth biting his bottom lip. And he will see his new friend behind him, he will see the blank expression on his emotionless face dismissed of any life or feelings or respect. He will see not a smile upon my face, Adam himself nor his new friend, for I shall hold no such thing upon myself, I shall be as bland as the deceit of the night has come to make me, and he shall weep, in the reflection of my tear ridden eyes he will see himself weep, and he will not stop weeping.

“Oi! Open the fucking door then!”
I bite awake and wipe my eyes, I hear a knocking surround the room. As the door creaks open with my hand behind it, a small, pale smile peaks round the door:
“All right, mate? You won’t believe who I’ve just seen.”
I walk into the room beholding my dark red chair; I ease my way down, “Oh yeah, who was that then?”
Sam walks in with a glass of wine in her left hand, just taken from my fridge, and a small piece of paper wrapped up tightly in the other, “Adam! I saw him in HMV. I was only there to check out that bloke I like behind the counter, and in walks Adam, looking hotter than the sun too I might add!”
I run my fingers through my hair as I start taking out a cigarette with my other hand, “Oh really? What was he up to in there?”
“Dunno, I didn’t even talk to him.”
As I light a cigarette I throw Sam the packet. I have my feet up on a broken stall in front of me. Sam is sitting on a beanbag a few feet to the left of me. As she unravels the paper and sets out two lines on an Abba CD, we hear the door knock again. It swings open quickly. In bursts Fruithead with a spliff alight in his hand; he stumbles into the room gasping for breath.
“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my fucking God! You won’t believe who I just saw outside the flat holding a piece of paper with your address on it in his hand and in the other holding a brown parcel with your name on it!”
“Yeh. Who was it?” Sam gazes into his eyes waiting for a response as she sets out a third line.
He leans in towards me as he lays his oil-stained hands upon my spotlessly clean shoulder, “Adam. I actually fucking saw him outside. He’s got a parcel for you. You know about it?”
“Not a clue. Sounds weird.” As I lie back into the dark red chair he hands me the spliff. He takes a cigarette out of the packet on the coffee table and sits on the beanbag to the right of Sam.
A green straw cut at each end lies inert in the palm of Sam’s hand; it is placed against the plastic case of the CD, Abba look away as if they don’t know what’s going on, Sam places her nose on the end, slowly, draw, moving across the letters, A…B…B…A… Slowly.
She wipes her nose and turns to Fruithead, “Was he coming up here then or what?”
Fruithead takes the CD and does one himself, as he does he faces me with a gaze of sincerity, “Yeh. He’s coming.”
“Oh.” I sigh as I take the CD. “Never get a break, do we?”
“Tell me about it.” Sam sinks back into the chair and puts her hands on her head.

The light knock of the door like rain pattering on a hood echoes through my heart and numbs my fingertips, sends chills to the places he has chilled so many times before, it sends memories flowing into my head like a red sea of pain and spilt blood, it sends a blind vision of hurt and regret into the deepest veins of my heart, and I shake as I rise solemnly.
Divine is my tender touch as I lay my resisting fingers against the cold metal of the doorknob, knowing that Adam is on the other side, knowing my world is behind the door, knowing that my life and the cause for its end stand mere centimetres from the other side of the wooden door. I breathe in slowly and turn my hand, as I do the door moves towards me. I see the light of the hallway seeping in and covering the darkness of my tracks. A parcel in brown paper slips through a gap in the air straight into the palm of my hand and empty is the sky in which I float: it’s blue, the clouds are white, the breeze is light and the sun is warm, no one is near, vast emptiness surrounds the view I behold. And in my hand lies a brown package. It has words written in dark red ink, eccentric writing, “Dear you, if you’re reading this you’re probally in space. Probally nowhere near me or anyone else, in your warm air and lite breeze, you porbally ant got shoes on. I can only imagine what hapens in your head, but I no that you’ll be thinking of me. And for that, this is for you… enjoy.”

I stand straight on the cracked wooden floorboards and look straight into the door in front of me. My fingernails pierce the paper carefully. Tears drizzle like rain on an umbrella down the side of my cheek. My forehead is moist. My underarms and back are damp. My eyes, despite repeated efforts, refuse to blink; I see a blur of white on a brown background. Down goes my head, in towards the parcel. I lay my fingers on the white cotton and drop the brown paper. Nothing moves, I stand still. The white cotton unfolds and revealed is a vest, a small white vest. On the front is printed a picture of my face. My face is unadorned. My eyes are wet and in the reflection he stands, holding emptiness in his hands. He looks straight at me. A blank expression. In the reflection of his eyes stands nothing. A vacant canvas onto which his eyes paint his thoughts.

THE END