DEAR WEIRD ONE by Sarah Cipullo
Dear Weird One,
I received a letter and it was not yours. Someone traveled across the ocean today and it wasn’t you. At the airport, your absence moved close to them and it dragged its suitcase.
If I had been there, I could have convinced myself that your eyes were simply out of sight, hidden behind the girl with the dog in her purse or behind the man with the tennis shoes and the denim jacket. But I wasn’t there and so weren’t you. Like matter and antimatter we did not meet. For the past two years you have been in and out of my life, materializing as a message on chat at work or as a voice in a call. I learnt some things about you. I know that you’re kind, that you have an accent and a sense of humor. Your language isn’t flawless, but it is liquid and it flows wild like a river, breaking against stones. I love when you don’t say what you mean, or when you get out of your throat English proverbs I never heard, games I never played, animals I can’t recognize and words that were abandoned. Occasionally the American you speak is so messy and funny that it sounds like the airports you imagine in California - all big hats, flowery skirts, flip-flops and naked butts. The language that itches between my teeth, on the other hand, must be like a tidy room. I can hear a desk. Objects are placed on it with sharp precision. The books are lined up on the edges and there are tidy blankets and soft colored pillows on a queen size bed. Oh, and there’s a wardrobe too of course. How boring though, right? I still remember when I told you once, “you’re most welcome.” So formal.
During our meetings I looked at you sometimes and maybe I liked you a bit. Maybe I eyeballed the logic of your face, noticed how your nose curves, how your cheekbones protrude and how your lips stretch. When I was locked in my apartment because COVID was spreading outside, maybe, just maybe, I walked with you once upon a dream and I wished you could burn my every lazy, tired and smug thought. But a dream is a dream. Just another place beyond all consequences. It’s not real. You are not real. Or at least, you don’t exist in my reality. I can’t say I know you and I don't know what to think of you, what I want from you. I couldn't know as I wouldn't know if I hadn't been aware of your existence on this planet.
Dear Weird One, I'm forty-six and all invasive medical screenings have already begun. I’m forty-six and you’re so young and I can't help it. We will never meet. The connection you experienced was an illusion and the slight, almost nonexistent interest I felt for you died away the moment I had my first vaccine shot, and came back to the world. Life is not inside a virtual window. I don’t care about what you did last summer, about the book you’re reading, about what music you listen to, about what day you were born on. Sometimes you send me a chat for work and I even forget to answer you back. Still, you peeked past the doorstep of the world behind the inseam of my closed lips, and though the furniture of my English looked very boring, you put your bare feet on my cold floor, you shifted the weight from heel to forefoot and tasted the harsh sounds without really understanding what you were saying. You went to the wardrobe to open its doors and recognize the chemistry of idioms, the invented words, the names of my flowers. You used my language and held it close to you as if not to let it fall. I sensed the care you put in the words you chose. You crafted sentences for me by paying attention to a grammar that makes you feel like a guest. And I didn’t reply. I’m not going to.
When I received your love message, I felt your letters like skin on my screen. I got scared, but I thought about it and I concluded that in your broken English you asked for words I can’t and don’t want to give you. You were so upfront, and maybe someone could say I acted like a coward instead, yet silence was the only thing that bloomed among my ribs. I know it hurts, but truth is that you’re alone on the swing you built between our continents. We live such different lives and I am what you are not. I grew up in a country blossomed on genocide and live on stolen land, while you walk careless among centuries of history, surrounded by a beauty that I would feel obliged to admire. I hope you’ll soon wake up with your hands on the rope and get off that swing, because the feelings you long for won’t come from the direction you are staring at right now. They were never there.
You know, I’m sure you’re going to be a good anecdote to share with someone I may want to fuck with in the future. They’ll have a particular face and I will focus on the insignificant particularity of their person at that moment in my life. On the details that if changed would not change anything. I’ll tell them about this Weird One of mine who, from an ancient and lost world, sent me the most untoward love message ever. They’ll be close to my body and will mock you with a smile. But for a few minutes, while I picture them bending me over the table, you’ll be on my lips. I will still think of you sometimes, Lara.
Sarah Cipullo lives in Turin, Italy. She writes in English as a foreigner and sometimes comes back to Italian to seek warmth. Her work has been published in The New York Times, Rivista Crack, Sky Island Journal, FRiGG Magazine, Penelope Story Lab, The /tƐmz/ Review, and elsewhere.