Not the letters, no. Not the ones that she’s been writing to me for eight years. These are the ones she’s been leaving me these past weeks.
The ones I’m addicted to.
Every day I open my mailbox, that piece of shit junk that gets jammed and I have to shake it open, telling myself that I’m doing it because that’s what’s expected of me.
As a member of the faculty, I need to be apprised of what’s happening at St. Mary’s. The staff meetings, a memo about lunchroom cleanliness and all the bullshit that goes on at a high school.
But when I stick my hand in to collect those documents, the very first one that I open is her orange envelope.
I fold them over and put them in an orange envelope…
That’s what she said, right?
That she puts them in an envelope like these, the ones that I have scattered around the gray carpeted floor as my body crashes on my knees.
As I go to fish them out of those envelopes though, I realize my fingers are wet and snowy. So I wipe them on my pants. I wipe them on the sheets of my bed, dry them before I touch those notes.
Before I read what I’ve already read a thousand times.
A thousand fucking times.
I actually like to read them when she’s here. When she’s sleeping because I tired her out after sex.
So I can look at her rosy cheeks while reading her words.
So her moans are fresh in my mind.
I read them and get jacked up.
Then, either I wake her up to fuck her again or I work out like a demon.
Because her written words flow in my veins, float through my chest like the nicotine smoke of a cigarette and I don’t know what else to do.
She thinks I’m exercising, breaking my bones, tearing up my muscles because I have some kind of a death wish. Because I want to be at the top of my game when I get back.
I don’t tell her that it’s because of her.
Because I don’t know what to do with her.
I don’t understand her. I don’t understand where she came from and how she affects me like this. I don’t understand what to do with the words she leaves me.
I don’t tell her that I’m obsessed with her letters.
Because what the fuck is that going to accomplish anyway?
Iamgoing back.
I am going to be at the top once again.
That’s my destiny, isn’t it?
That’s what I’ve always wanted. That’s what they taught me to want, my parents. My mother.
Greatness and perfection.
So I don’t understand why there’s a pain in my chest. Why it hasn’t gone away since yesterday, when it appeared at the party.
Why is it so intense, so fucking massive that my heart – the thing that I thought I’d killed a long time ago – almost rips out of my chest and thumps on the floor, sullying the notes spread out before me?
