Since, A Novel

xv. THE POSTWOMAN

xv.
THE POSTWOMAN

December 2023. A little life, they say. Dare this one scoff at us? It seems so, and my apologies. I've founded the both of us long apologies, in lieu of a sanctuary, that I recite every night after you are sound asleep.

You won't be hearing my words, and neither do I. Because just how could you, let alone make you? I know this room is getting colder and colder as I wait—though I know so well it must be even harder to have no choice but to still. To lay down, forced to hush. Dreamless nights' labourer. In our thin lives we're offered this, as if to be merciful. As if I am to be thanked, "Your resiliency's gotten you here—be proud." Oh, I would want to be proud. Help me be.

The opening and closing of my mouth and my breathing: the very things on the cusp of a judgement, perhaps one that is not good enough. Only those, because I am afraid that if I unloose more of them, even some of them, you won't hear them but they will hear you—they ought to. I had thought I was incapable of worrying about showing you how vulnerable I was, or am, of course, just like any others. There'd always be a fright at the end of my deeds, whether they were for you or for others. You and I are in this room—I don't want this to be us. The walls and chairs and windows around us, and the roof above: Either they are looking down on us and see nothing but a crying shame, or have the two of us close and think of sympathy—none of which I could tell.

Or, of course, they do not think and feel at all, and so for a second I was an apology, for another I am a beggar. I am my own witness of my begging, wishing even the lifeless for a chance, as though chance is something like a note inside an opened fortune cookie that somehow made its way to you after having been thrown by someone more fortunate enough.

There would be times, mostly on evenings when all's quiet enough to lose my wits, when I'd beg for the omniscient creature to show itself; I'd assume it is within these objects, these walls: I'd beg for another's mouth to tell me how early it is to mourn, and how inane it is to even think of wailing even in silence—a mouth penetrating enough to yell at me and carp at my wrongs; be cavil, be unreasonable, spit nonsense—those are what I'd ask for a favour. I'd beg for another's pair of eyes to see and question, preferably much more glaring and keener than the ones I have: what do I even mourn for? Whom do I mourn?—a pair of eyes more foresighted to see whatever lies ahead, which mine don't no matter how naked they are. But I don't beg for a pair of ears to hear my disembodied words tonight, all laden and hopeful for a hint of you and your sound and your body language. You had always told me our God cannot be asleep, that He is taking His time. But neither have I felt Him waking.

This is silly, but I have always wanted to have a portrait of you; be the one to make it, have the hands behind each stroke of you. The longing pined away and left my mouth as I sighed, thinking about the happiness that it would make us: a portrait of you, smiling, your eyes smiling; everything in your face is worth a distant god's ransom. And that would not be good—thinking of being the one to make you—would it? But it also feels wrong to just wait here and succumb to my own stillness.

You know, the best five hours of my life was when the window of my room, back in our home, had held my gaze out; the longer it had gone on, the more sought-after and closer the nothingness had become. Such a haze was those five hours: in front of me was a canvas—I could tell it was appealing to relish, to a good-old greatness, to a little flair; all the things I hadn't been bereft of with my life with you. How content was I?

All my apologies and my begging: what if you dream one day and they do hear you? What if you see me one Saturday and it's your day off from work, you've just woken up, your eyes squinting at the noon sun because you probably spent all-nighters reading and painting, and I'm in the kitchen, still mastering your favourites (still don't know what they precisely are), and you ask yourself, "Are we living?"