A Letter, Yellowing
To Whom It May Concern,
I’m kidding, don’t give me that look.
You probably weren’t expecting a letter. I certainly wasn’t expecting to write one. I’m not really sure what to put here, so I’m afraid I may ramble. I’ll try to keep it readable at the very least. Honestly, I’ve been hunched over this project, pen in hand and paper crumpling, for far longer than I’d like to admit. But I find myself compelled to scribble. I can only hope you’ll forgive me the sudden sentimentality.
Yours will be the only letter I bother with, but don’t read too much into that.
Anyway, you recall how we used to hike the game trails in that little forest behind our home — how we used to find all those bones there? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. How surprising it was, at first. How unexpected. As though death were a superstition and we had just stumbled upon a ghost. I still remember the flare of fear in your face, flushed pink from our sprint across the moss-beds, and the sudden weight of your arms around my shoulders, your breath in my neck. To come so suddenly upon such a stark token in our verdant playground was bewildering, and more than a little unsettling.
I didn’t say it then, but I was terrified. Though of course you were daring as ever, and by the end of the day you had braided a flower wreath and laid it upon that mysterious ungulate’s head. You mastered that fear so quickly, it drove me mad. All I could do was grimace, put up a tough front, push the shivers back down my spine and smile. Truth be told, it frightens me still, though the smile comes easier.
I find myself mulling over those bones. A terrible reminder at the time, they’ve come to be something of a comfort. I had thought them an ignominious end to a menial life, but the more I contemplate the more they seem like a benefaction. A tribute for a home much loved. A monument to life; its end and its continuing. And as you can probably imagine, I’ve had plenty of time for contemplation lately.
This has always been my home. From the first day in that blustery winter — so like the winter that blows outside the window now — when I looked up from dragging my little chest and suitcase and saw you across the gravel lane. From the moment you waved and my mother looked down and smiled, taking my burdens and whispering: Go on, introduce yourself. From that moment, I’ve been home.
And I want to stay. I want to crawl outside and sink my fingers into the snow, up to my elbows, up above my spotty nose and floppy old ears. I want to remain.
I daresay I understand those creatures now. Their bones lay not where they have fallen but where they lived. And now life brims within and about them. I want to remain, as they do. For I have lived as they did.
And so I make a request. Yes, another one. This will be the last time, I swear.
Build of me a sanctuary.
Take all the pieces of me and sow them through our valley. Stack femur and tibia in the forest where unseen rascals scamper. Tie stones to sternum and drop the cage in the lake around where we used to swim. Hide vertebrae in the white rocks by the shore.
Rig up the hyoid where the wind can whistle through it, like how we whistled our ditties flashing through the switchgrass. Lay scapula across our roof, where we would watch the water trickle through in the fall.
Let the warblers nest beneath the sacrum’s shield, make for the sparrows a perch of clavicle. String finger-bones from the old boughs we bent and stake up their saplings with sinewy humerus. Fill the parietal bone with berries, to make the pie you would bring me when I was too weak to rise out of bed.
Take what’s left and scatter it as dust, let the summer breeze that fluttered the towels we donned as capes carry it all away.
Finally, lay my face upon your heart. Put my memory to rest in the quietest room of your mind. Forget me when you smile, and live your life as bold as we lived those springs. Those precious days passed without examination.
And when you braid my wreath braid it of your favourite flowers and place it atop your own head. It would look exceeding silly on my wispy old pate.
Sincerely yours,
That Strange Neighbour Boy
