Dear you, 
It’s 3:13 AM. 
I shouldn’t be writing this. But it is late, and the night has no mercy. 

The wall of my apartment smells like rain and burnt coffee. The rain no longer feels like a rain and the walls whispers your name. My shadow on the floor keeps shifting. I keep telling myself not to write you, yet, here I am, spiraling myself into a letter, I may never send. 

Maybe, I’ve been writing this letter my whole life and only tonight do the words crawl out. Maybe this has been happening for years, and I am just now brave enough- or drunk enough- to jolt this down. 

I don’t know when to start. I don’t know where to start. I don’t know how to start. Maybe there isn’t an ending or a beginning. 

I am scared; that’s the whole truth.
I am scared, scared of me, scared of you, scared for you. 

Scared of the ghosts from past which keep dragging me from behind- like tin cans or wrecked car. 
Ex lovers, old lovers, half lovers, people, who never saw me as I was, but through the tiny keyhole of their perceptions. Who saw in me their own ghosts, their own image, their own illusions. They punished me for not living by those illusions. I let them. 

Hurt has its own gravity, and I orbit it like a dead star. One cannot escape from the ghosts of the past. 

Now, I just have scars that hum when someone walks too close. I have survived, confused, screwed up, but here. I have gotten used to living alone, away from the society. Sometimes, this is all I am good at. More times, it feels like this is all I deserve. 
Do I deserve you drag you into my abyss? 

The truth is simple- I love you; In fact- I have for a while- ever since, or before- I have known you. I love you. 

No, I don’t love you in the way people use the word, not with its safe, sugar-coated edges. 
What I feel is not small. It’s a fever. A bruise. A low hum under my bones. 

You are not here, yet I feel you in my bones. It’s a sickness I heed because I am afraid what would happen if I let it starve. My bones keep shouting at me, “she is your bliss and abyss.”

I think of telling you aloud. 
I want to blurt it out in a supermarket aisle, on a crowded bus, anywhere, just to stop drowning in my own mouth.  But I don’t. I swallow it, day after day. I sit here alone, pretending my skin isn’t longing for your embrace. 

By morning, I wake with a fist full of ash- another day, longing, again, again, night, repeat. Again. 

It’s Kafka’s kind of love- half agony, half hope- but at least he had the courage to write letters. 
I’m afraid that if I tell you, you’ll vanish. Like a photograph left too close to a lamp- your image burned out, leaving only a white hole. Like Milena vanished for Kafka. 

If I send this, I am afraid I’d lose you not just in reality but in my imagination too, and that would be unbearable.

It's 3:37 AM. 
The street outside is empty, except for a half- lit sign and a stray cat. 

The walls breathe, rain claws in the windows. The walls lean close, and silence threatens. 
I told myself- I’d stop here, fold the paper, hide it in some drawer and never let it breathe a daylight. But this body won’t let me. My hands tremble and I realize the letter is writing me more than I am writing it.

Kafka is here. I don’t mean in some distant, silent literary sense. 
I mean here- thin as a shadow- in the chair opposite me, like a damp cockroach. He whispers Milena the way I whisper your name into my pillow. He’s carving Milena into his own hands with a butter knife. The letters cut deeper each time. 

He mutters in German. I don’t know what his words are, but I know the meanings: “Don’t send it. She’ll vanish. Milena always vanishes.” He keeps on telling, “the post never reaches the dead.” But I keep on writing. I tell myself; letters fail to reach the living too. 

Sylvia is sitting on my bed now, barefoot, her bell jar under one arm like a baby. 
She’s peeling the wallpaper off the walls, revealing another room underneath, then another, then another, each one smaller and darker. She says this is what you do with your heart. 

She puts her hand on my chest, and I swear I feel like a cage, in search of birds slamming against my bones. 
She murmurs, “Write it anyway. What’s worst- another ghost?” 

Virginia is at the window. She’s brought the sea with her. 
She pours the sea air across my carpet, and it is spilling across the floorboards. Her hair floats as if underwater. She whispers to me, “Every love is a river. You either drown or learn to grow gills.” I want to tell her I can’t swim, but waves are in my ribs, stones are my words. 
I close my fist around it and feel your absence inside it.

Rilke quietly comes in next, burning like a candle that refuses to die. 
He kneels by the radiator, head bowed, murmuring prayers that sound like your breath when you’re about to laugh. He hands me an envelope sealed in wax. When I open it, it’s empty except for your name written over and over until the ink itself feel alive. 

They are writing itself across the blank pages, like black worms. My chest hurts reading them, as if my heartbeats are nothing but your name on repeat. 

Anaïs slips in barefoot, smelling of salt and scandal. 
She laughs at me, lights a match at this whole sad ritual, and says: “Desire is meant to be indecent. Stop dressing it in metaphors. Take it naked, or don’t take it at all.” The room shakes with her voice, and the walls are bleeding. She leans close in my head and whispers “you have built a church out of your own hunger and wonder why no one comes to pray.” 

The match dies and the room smells of Sulphur. I want to argue, but leaving only echoes, she’s already vanished. 

And you- you’re not here, but you are here. 
You’re in the walls, in the rain, in the ghosts, in the exhale of my breathe. Here, now, always, wherever or whenever you are.

Regardless of wherever you are.  Or I am. If there is a beginning or an ending. You reside, in the pulses of my blood veins, your longing becomes a song in my heartbeats. You have made this drag of an old heart, melt. Here. Now. Always. 

Anaïs once wrote to Henry Miller: “You live in the depths of my tenderness like a blade.” That’s how you live inside of me. Your name keeps moving across the walls, changing shape: river, bruise, stone, wing. 

I keep imagining your voice cutting through, your fingers brushing the ash from my hair, your lips close enough to silence the room. Sometimes I see it as a wound. Sometimes as a door. I keep knocking. But it’s just me. Just the ghosts. Just the letter. 

I don’t even know what I want. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. 
Maybe just a second of being seen without mirrors distorting me. Maybe just to keep breathing until daylight without devouring myself. 

I want to tell you I love you, but the word “love” is like a bone splinter in my throat. It’s too small. 
It’s a coin dropped into an endless well. It’s a fever running through my bones. It’s a cage full of birds smashing themselves against my ribs. 

It’s the bell jar sliding down. It’s the sea rising. It’s the abyss laughing. It’s half agony, half hope, half asleep, half awake, and all of it yours, all of it yours, all of it yours. You are a bliss to my abyss. 

It is later now. Or earlier, or no time at all. 

It is 4:48 or 5:37 or 6:39 AM. 
Who cares, the clocks are liars. The rain has stopped, and my coffee has gone cold. 

The sky is that pale gray just before it bleeds. The walls have been murmuring for hours. 
I have stopped pretending they are not. The walls are still breathing. My pen keeps moving. I keep telling myself to stop, fold the letter, hide it, but the words keep coming like an infection you can’t sweat out. 

This isn’t a letter anymore, it’s a spill, it’s a mess, it’s my head split open on paper.

The ghosts have not left; they have grown quieter. 
Kafka is still here, not looking at me now, just craving your name into my own hands. Sylvia is peeling the paint of the walls telling me to listen to the old brag of my heart, tempting me to shout “I am. I am. I am.”  Virginia keeps pressing me to grow gills when I tell her, I can’t swim. 

Anaïs lights a match, holds it under my chin, grins. 
I smell Sulphur in her fingers. Rilke kneels at my feet, head bowed, murmuring in German. Words I can’t understand but feel. He just places a blank page on my lap, your name pours out, again and again, like blood songs.

And you- you are here but you are not. 
You are inside all of them, inside the walls, inside the rain, inside my pen, inside the ghosts. I know you have roots here, and this soil suffocates me. I cannot break apart from this sad oxymoron. Yet, your name crawls across the walls and keeps changing shape: river, bruise, stone, wing, wound, door, love, hope, life. 

If I told you this, would you stay? Would you even believe this is me and not some ghost writing with my artificial hand? Would you drop this letter into a river like Virginia’s stone, let it sink and never speak of it? 

If I told you would the room stop? Would the rain stop? Would the sea recede? Would you vanish like Milena vanished for Kafka, like every fragile thing I’ve tried to hold? 

Or would you read it and for one moment see me without the ghosts? Or would the whole thing split open, spill out, drown us both?

It is later now. The sun is here. 
The sky bleeds no more. The sea has receded from the floor, but the smell of salt is still here. 

The ghosts are fading but their voices are still in the walls. Kafka whispers, “don’t send it.” Plath whispers, “write it anyway.” Virginia whispers, “stones and rivers.” Anaïs whispers, “take her or die.” Rilke whispers nothing. 

I whisper your name back to them, louder and louder until the page shakes. This letter is no longer a letter. It is a tide. It is a wound. It is a confession. It is a body. It is me. It is you. Maybe us. After all this word vomit, I do not know what I want. 

Maybe nothing. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Maybe everything. Maybe just to keep breathing until daylight without devouring myself. 

I don’t know what’s happening anymore. The paper is soft as skin under my hands. I keep writing your name and it keeps changing shape- river, bruise, wing, stone, wound, door, bliss, abyss, cage, bird, agony, hope. 

I like you. I adore you. I love you. I hate the word, but it is the only one left. I love you. It is killing me. It is keeping me alive. I like you. I love you. I hope you.

Listening to your heart is a tough task, I apologize for making you read this. I want to stop. 

I don’t stop. Because to stop is to sleep, and to sleep is to dream, and to dream is to wake without you again. I cannot bear that. Not now. Not ever. 

I hope you don’t vanish, 
Yours,
(yours?)
mine,
(none?)
someone,
no one,
-	Me