"Dear Theodore" beginnings... written during english today
Much love, Theodore.
The leaves have lost their green;
the world of twenty years ago
was better left unseen....
Much love, Theodore--
from stories left untold,
and dreams I’ve never dreamed about,
and thoughts I’ve never known....
I started writing to Theodore a good couple of months ago, after one night of letting my mind wonder and seeing all sorts and combinations of people that my mind has ever known. He had not come across my mind for a good couple of years... and even back then I thought I should write him, but everytime I thought I came close, I pulled myself away from it and put it off, as is often the case. I figured it didn't really matter-- he would not read it anyway. He, if anything, would hear my thoughts or prayers, but he could never understand what I was writing. He would not be able to read it now, no matter how much I wished against it, not matter how often I wish I could tell someone what happened.
Out of respect I didn't tell a soul.
Once I started writing, everything came back, and letter after letter to Theodore poured out of the inkwell, remembering the days when we played at the water's edge, waiting for the ships to come and go like a writer's inspiration. I dipped and scratched away the words, as if emptying the well would bring him back from its black waters. I waited and wrote, staying up for the entire night, collapsing not in the coming dawn, but the one thereafter. Questions, answers, musings, expressions that had been dammed back from three, five, twenty years ago burst and flooded the pages of pressed paper.
The coffin had been opened only to reveal thoughts I had buried alive; not only were those thoughts alive, but they had somehow managed to flourish and grow. Not only were had those thoughts come to live in my mind-- they had a voice. I wrote until they did not speak to me any more.