Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

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Tag: short stories

10/Dec/2013

Dead Sleep

There will be plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead. There will not be enough air. There will be no temperature, but you will invent one. That will be cold. There will not be enough duvet, and your dreams will be restless. It will be like being underwater, and the uncertainty about which way gravity is pulling you. On occasion, you will come closer to the surface and you will almost wake up, but it will be like a sheet of clear ice lies between you and true consciousness, and off you drift again, thinking, “Just five more minutes.”

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9/Dec/2013

Graffiti Area

The wall was installed by the city commissioner shock-full of colourful defiance from the start. It has a sign that says, “Graffiti Area,” and another one that said something about the Queen. It’s grey now. Youth have taken to shoplifting cartloads of spraypaint from local stores, and spending hours each night just painting this massive wall grey. They use old white t-shirts as makeshift balaclava gas-masks. After a night of going at it, they throw away their last spraycans and discard their shirts to discover they have ventilated grey kisses into them, by breathing so heavily so near that wall.

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8/Dec/2013

Final Draft of an Unsent Love Letter

Subj: A Hell of a Thing to Forgive Someone For

Hello, it is me again. You must be sick half to death of hearing my voice by now. Do you hear my voice when you read these, or have you forgotten it? I try to read books hearing your voice, but my thoughts tend to stray. They say some things, beginnings and ends mostly, you never forget. I haven’t forgotten a single stupid thing I said; I try to remember you from those particles. It is unfair.

I was wondering if you would care to talk to me at all.

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7/Dec/2013

Sixth Draft of an Unsent Love Letter

Subj: Apologies for all the Subterfuge

I’ve been writing you false love letters. It was a necessity; I hope your feelings have not been hurt. You must think me cruel, but it is important that they question everything I write. I cannot let them onto my real designs.

Maybe we were childhood friends, almost-lovers, or I picked you out from the phonebook.

You will receive a phone call in about a week’s time, and a sly slick voice will ask you if you know who I am. It is paramount that you answer that you do not. I am sorry.

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6/Dec/2013

Fifth Draft of an Unsent Love Letter

Subj: I Will Start This Love Letter in Medias Res because Otherwise I Will Never Dare to Say This

You held my hands above my head and I was helpless and this forced something in me to change, the penny finally dropped, and I swear you could hear it from my open mouth. Something shifted, like quicksand, and I saw you with new eyes. Do you understand what was going through my head at that time? It was the only time you rendered me speechless, bizarrely. And I closed my eyes and let you take me and I forgive you.

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5/Dec/2013

Fourth Draft of an Unsent Love Letter

Subj: Hypocrisy

Your clothes hugged you tight and I wondered how the muscles on your back would look, but I closed the door on your rainstruck face in the middle of the night and I said, “I have things to do.” I felt like my heart had sunk to my stomach and was being dissolved in its acid. You were so sad, you would have done anything for me, for a cup of hot chocolate and a listening ear. We trembled for different reasons.

Yes, of course I hate myself. There is no reason you would even open this letter.

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4/Dec/2013

Third Draft of an Unsent Love Letter

Subj: I Miss Your Accent

How you opened the floodgates and let every little influence through, just to sound like you came from somewhere other than your hometown. I liked the way you would get plastered; they would trickle back then, all the regional words, all the hang-ups you had worked so hard on to shrug off. I miss the way you could talk about a place you’d never been to, and make me feel like I’d been there with you. Your half-finished novels, your half-drowned poetry. I know I was just a phase for you. I miss that phase.

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3/Dec/2013

Second Draft of an Unsent Love Letter

Subj: I Know You Said Not to Write

I’ve been thinking about you. The weather’s been in a sour mood. There’s a causal link there but I can’t figure out which way it goes. You said once, smiling, that you were cursed to umbrellas, good coffee, and books.

Did you know that the rain was lukewarm and perfect on that night you bailed on skinny-dipping? I imagined your shoulderblades.

Sorry. There’s no easy way to say this; I need to ask you a favour. In person. Come to the pub the day after you receive this letter. I’ll explain everything.

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2/Dec/2013

First Draft of an Unsent Love Letter

Subj: Something I Imagined

There is interference on the line, and a delay to boot, and I feel like I’m in love with an entity the other end of the galaxy. Two distant stars radiating outward, hoping that the signal-noise ratio is high enough to have a conversation. But I mean every gesture, every thing I repeat three times hoping one of them will get through, and I cherish what I hear from you, and when you say,

“I love you,”

I feel like I am touching you for just a split-second, all distance in the world be damned.

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1/Dec/2013

Unink

I put my feelings into words, onto paper, with a black pen, and I put the lid back and I set it aside. I perform the ritual to uncap the green pen. I underline. I explain myself in the margin. I argue. I circle words, connect them to words further up. I put the lid back, and I put the pen aside. I uncap the red pen and start crossing words out. I write foreign symbols in the margin, where there’s room for it.

I fold the paper, read it until I know it, and put it in the fireplace.

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