Dear D.L.D.,
Couldn’t sleep again last night: my shame paraded in the room, like a Brechtian cabaret. Joel Grey in white pancake, winking at me. Come wallow a while, you know you want to. I won’t tell, but I will insinuate. There are no secrets here.
I no longer dream that I’m an adolescent: there is no longer anyone else to blame.
It is funny how memories are connected to places. Though sometimes inaccurately. They are free-floating, but put down roots. Like weeds, they will find a way. They will break through the concrete, they will travel over oceans. They tether themselves to whatever they can grab hold of. And will not be excised.
The face of my son, the face of my brother morph into each other in dreams. In a slip of the tongue, a slip of thought. Narratives are a construction of details, knotted rationalisations. Plots are the thin ribbons of what has been forced through a sieve of (self-) consciousness. What is true is what has been honestly left unsaid.
For the sake of honesty.
I miss the ghosts I took with me from house to trailer to dorm to apartment. I left them in Texas. I didn’t mean to. The defeated soldier. The sorrowful girl. A truth can be conjured with the right descriptors. I am still searching.
I left them all, but the old woman. She is often a basket of clothing near the window at 4 am. Still silent. I have been waiting for her to tell me something. All these years.
She is you, isn’t she?
So, you tell me this: Would it be a sin to buy a Ouija board?
Respectfully,
Ren
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