PREFACE
Dear reader,
leaving letters to our loved ones is a romantic wandering.
It is a freedom; that overwhelming sense of release that you would swear you could have seen disconnecting from your body - a liberty while still pressing the tip of your pen, but anxiety as soon as you watch your shadow break on the edge of the grave.
It is adrenaline blurring the reality that I should have brought a chest and a shovel, passing the gatekeeper while whistling the song of innocence as I would drag the tool with a rattle across the cobblestone.
It is more Catherine of Aragon than Marie Antoinette. She has his eyes, but she is not him. She lived those years, yet she remains distinct from him. I could never be as good at pretending or believing people’s faith in family connections.
There’s a manual I had snatched from the gatekeeper’s back pocket when he wasn’t looking. How to dig a hole, it says. It’s almost as if he thought it necessary to offer guidance in case the grievers’ cemetery adventure takes an unexpected turn.
Step one: Insert the tip of your shovel into the soil.
Step two: Break up the top layer -consider it a warm-up. Then remove the loosened dirt.
I would rather get my jeans dirty if that meant burying the chest of envelopes beside the casket; digging as deep until I hear the hollow bump and a clatter of bones.
Only, the letters are still on me, some threatening to crumble like a tower from the pile, some still not torn from my notebook’s spiral bindings. They travelled above the ocean, across the sky and through the metal detector with me. They were arranged by date, by theme and read aloud under the flashlight’s gleam. But they were trembling as my hands and voice took an unexpected turn of unease once I saw the name engraved into stone with a final touch.
Maybe I am scared of the gatekeeper’s look of a crime investigator, or maybe I don’t have an explanation stamped as valid. Reading your letters aloud to those who can’t hear you is a romantic wandering.
Dear reader, don’t dwell on what is real and what is not, you only have my written word as a support.
Cherry
