Letters to Gerry

8 months, 7 days

Dear Gerry

Every morning I sit. And I wait. I wait and wait knowing that you have left me on my own. I hate you for it. Like waiting for a train knowing you have already missed it, I wait for you. I wait for you knowing that I have already been forgotten to you. My mother was right. Why would you torture me with such letters, never knowing when or if there was another one!
I wait for you to release me, to let me be. I fall asleep every night waiting and hoping. Perhaps you’ll come back to me tomorrow. I stare into an abyss of faces searching for evidence of you. I see your green eyes, complete with golden harvest flecks become displaced in the fair skin of a stranger. The anxiety and expectancy fills me and with every passing person I search for your face. I can feel your cupid bow lips against my hot skin.

I shared forever kisses with you. I lay secure in your arms, I love you still and yet you do nothing to amend this unanswered emotion. Never did I know if I distracted you when you pictured me.
I want to share my moments, for you to listen to my thoughts. I want to be held tight and trust you enough when I can’t trust myself. I want to lock the contours of you onto my fingertips, the movement of your lips into mine. I don’t want to have to recall the smudgings of your eyes but see them and want to have your touch dissolve into my skin.

Your last night sleeps in my memory – it holds onto me like iron shackles – and it doesn’t leave. Unlike you. It never changes and it is terrifyingly constant. I don’t understand how you’ve left. It’s all changed and twisted where your promises are now empty and I still hold onto what they were before. Your last breath echoing in my head over and over as I see your eyes lose their blaze.

Where did you go I ask in response to your silence. Without you there is an emptiness where I had previously allowed space for you. The space is now barren, cold. It is hollow and there is no comfort in my heart.

I catch myself dreaming with only half of my soul as the dripping sky melts along with my sentiments; the disappointment and eventual rejection are etched slowly upon my eyes and later into my reality.

Where are you my darling? Mo chuisle?
And then you answer me by leaving me with sleepless nights, waiting.

11 months today

Dear Gerry

I woke up this morning and got out of my head – which was good. I didn’t want to think about work or Denise’s wedding or Sharon’s baby or John or Mom. Forgetting sounded good. And I wished hard that today would be that day that the world would sparkle for me, like it used to. You have been gone awhile, but not long enough baby. It was quiet today, the way it always starts and I discovered that in soft rain I can hear my thoughts. If I sit tranquil for long enough so that time converges into itself, I can hear the rain whisper my thoughts to you and the floating Autumn leaves shiver a secret as they crunch under my feet. It is as if everything around me knows that you are not coming back.

But I refuse to admit it.

Holly

1 year, 3 months

Dear Gerry

This place is quiet and alone. There are few traces of you here – photographs, obviously but your clothes and collected paraphernalia are all gone. Your scent isn’t here and neither are memories of you. Since the shoe art was selling so well, I have moved from the city.
I remember you demanding of me: ‘What do you want?’ I didn’t know what I truly wanted then. For now I want a house with space for the autumn leaves to fall, big trees and a tire swing – although I have yet to add that – and I wouldn’t mind you being here (I still keep your smile with me). The place has two bedrooms, our room and then a room for Denise or Mom. Its enchanting to be out of the city.

But that’s just for now. Nothing feels permanent any more.

Always,
Holly xx

1 year, 6 months, 5 days

Dear Gerry

This morning was cold and fresh. Although I could not feel it from my artificially heated room, I knew it was so for the mist that hung in the gully behind the house above the trickling stream and the shimmer of frost that had glued itself to the foliage of the forest.
Although I never sleep, I enjoy this time more than evenings; everything is new, it is another chance at the thousands of days I have endured. Always searching.

At the beginning of the day I feel as if I were normal, as if I were human. I live in suburbia. My husband is at work from nine to five, and I am a stay at home wife who is friends with my neighbours and perhaps a swollen belly. But I am not.

Sometimes it feels as if you are a part of my imagination. But in the end I always know where to look so as to turn the memory of you into something tangible. You are a moment where I can hold my breath for a whole day and still remain full of life, a feeling where I am intoxicated and let my reservations go yet I remain sober.

You are not gone, Gerry. You are the last of my thoughts after the sun has disappeared. I turn off the light, lay down and wander into the stars until forever, never once feeling the cold shiver upon me because you are in my thoughts. A fleeting glimpse of a spectacular moment of what was.

And I am lucky. So lucky.
I have hope. I have faith.

I love
you.