L.

Part 3. America, Paris [2001] A Letter

Tell me what I can give you. 

"The days are long and the years are short," you said to me. So that is your excuse for all these years between us.

"It has not been so long," you say, but that is your shame. 

I am not angry, Pet. I am not angry. 

In fact, these days I feel somehow peaceful. I will not struggle anymore. I feel, somehow, that you think of me. Is it funny? How could I know, and maybe it is because I feel near you.

You have always been a man with your heart in your throat. It tells on your face. I wanted so to push it back, to chest, to belly, or at least to loins. My own heart steadily, over this long time, has bled for yours. You want to hide it. You care for any other but yourself.

Hide not, heart.

O, it is true that I knew you from the first moment we met. You mistook me for something rather more pure, and yet, for something your own. 

"My," you said. "My own angel."

I told you yes, and pass away from this cruelty, visited upon you long before that hand of my own body, of Dasius, who had beaten you to the last breath of life. 

There is a crease between your brows that time cannot erase. You have that worried look that men take on when smallpox breeds within their blood. A look of pensive uncertainty that words cannot explain. But it was not pox taking you. Consumption had leeched away your color, beyond fairness and into the ashen pallor of the grave. Your eyes, vessels burst from hacking and vomiting, looked beyond me, and your blood, black against the cold cobbles, seeped from where you had been struck in the head.

And yet, somehow, looking on you, I felt no anger, and no passion. In their place, a speechless, stuttering sense of terror, of shock. I still feel it. A nervous, breathless fumbling for words. My limbs flushed with heat. 

You smiled at me. 

You leveled your blue eyes on me for a brief moment, and strained to smile, and whispered, "Do not cry, Angel."

I wanted to lift your head. I wanted to hold you against my breast so that you could not speak to me. It was too warm, and you must have begun to feel your death then, because you began to say "Come with me," and that you were afraid, and to "Take me with you," fearing purgatory or some other dark place, and your fine features, saved by an aspirational upbringing, softened upon seeing that my hand came from your head bloodied. Death.

You accepted nothing, though. 

You, without class or benefits, had grown strong with gentleness, with sweet kindness. You are my mercy. I could not see myself in you. No. Not at all. Never. Do not spurn this letter for its tears, which drop outside of my power. I promise you. I promise you. Leis, they are not for a vicious purpose. 

Not this time.

You said, "Take me with you." 

I love you, Pet. Pity me. Do not love. Look at me as wretched. Do not look at me the way that you do. With those eyes so naked, and so inquiring, so soft. 

Oh I cannot send this. I cannot send it. What will you think of me? 

You will look at this tear-stained paper, and you will come and see me as I am.

No. I will not drag you down again with me. 

I will put it away.

Oh, Pet, I cry out for you. I cannot help it. Desire for your face, for your hands overtakes me. It invades me, causing the little hairs upon my nape and my arms to stand, and I am cold. 

I am so blinded. I am so blinded. 

I taste your blood in my mouth. I feel that way of a new path, and it feels like it did then, as if there is only one way through. I feel I am consumed with a fate that I cannot prevent. 

If you were here, what would I be caused to do? You cannot come.

"Half," you used to tell me, "my half, do you hear the sparrows, terrified of the rain?" You lay in my arms, listening to my heart, fluttering of you, and you listened to the rain, listened to the birds in linden trees. In those days when you possessed me.

If I could be the man I was before I met you, I would. He did not know how to love like that. I cannot breathe. 

I hate Dasius for finding you. I hate him for failing to kill you twice. I hate him for no longer loving you the way he did. You have destroyed my love for him, for now my new heart loves him as strongly as I do you. How can he leave me alone? I suffer. I cannot do this. 

The room is too large and too empty. 

I have changed my mind. Come to me. Love me. Love me. 

It is too late now. It is too late now. What have I done?