The Persistence of Salami
I admit that if I were not receiving letters in two different ways, there would be some potential for confusion if they were unsigned.
Since your letter arrived on my pillow along with a scattering of seeds, it was instantly distinguishable. My other correspondence arrives via computer.
The statuette that you received along with the letter and the box was not enclosed by me, so I am forced to conclude that it was either sent by my house, or a gift to you from yours. Your enclosure appears to have been exchanged for the shower of seeds that are currently infesting my bedsheets.
I do not intend to complain - the process of correspondence between our places of being is fascinating.
Where I am there are no lawns to mow, no weeds to pull, but there are little laminate counters in the kitchen, nicked and scored. They were like that before the refrigerator supplied me with a melting salami that slipped through my fingers like an oil painting of a dream, or a memory that isn’t persistent at all. Someone has cooked here before, or at least cut something, with a very long and sharp knife.
The refrigerator works a little better, by the way. I walked up to it after I sent my last letter, and told the house that I needed proper nutrition. The cardboard skins of tv dinners weren’t going to cut it, nor were the marshmallows of sadness, and while I appreciated the potatoes, there is only so much you can do with them once they begin to blink at you with their many eyes.
Since then the refrigerator has been full, though some of the food it produces is strange. I am not sure what I should do with the melting salami. There is no garbage truck to come, once a week, and cart away the refuse of a disposable life. Nothing but the emptiness of the sky and wind and crater walls.
At night I can hear what I think may be the house, humming to itself. Unless, of course it is the refrigerator, confusing dreams and reality, meat and timepieces.
Since I sent your last letter, it has been days. I no longer count them, but when the sun crashes into my eyelids in the mornings I open them, and put my feet on the cool dusty floor. It is too easy not to, to sink back into stillness where I no longer hear the silence around me. There is no one here to make a single noise.
Are there more people, where you are? There must be, for you to earn money. Perhaps speaking to your house is not enough until it is complete, or perhaps it is only the extreme silence here, the lack of all other people, that allows my house to communicate back.
Or perhaps there was only a moment when the bones of your ear were lined up in the exact right spot to hear your house? It called you, after all. It must, however sick, be trying to tell you how to help it.
It is not so bad, being kept by a house, when the house is whole and well.
What happens when you are not sure of who you are?
- Anya
****
Author's Note: As always, this is part of The Pen Pal Project. A masterpost of my entries is here. This letter is in response to Xantheanmar's latest letter by Kiana Moss, Gathering Flowers.