These need work. I want Celia to decline, slowly, over the course.
I think my writing teacher will hate it.
But I hate her, so whatever.

Julian,

I waited as long as I could before writing. I don’t know if you remember how to read, but I hope you do, because I recently remembered how to write.

I woke up the morning you left. It was too cold to get out of bed, so I stayed there.

Yours,
Celia

___________________________________________________
Julian,

I have a stomachache and it’s getting me down. When I close my eyes I see bedbugs and dust mites. They live there, under my lids. I think they are slowly slowly traveling closer to my brain, which is full of cotton and dust.

Julian, where did you go? We have many things to teach each other. I can teach you about geometry. I know formulas that would change everything. I will draw you diagrams and label them in the correct order, clockwise from top right.

Julian, we have a lot of books to read. I would like to run into you at the library some day. I will pause and look you in the eye as you speak to me. And then I will pull a book from its place on the shelf and open it. And inside it will be nothing but dust due to the cohabitation of literate bookworms and their beloved letters.

Yours,
Celia

_______________________________________________________
Julian,

I have had an idea. We will go to the edge of the world together. We will walk until we reach the very brink. I think the place I speak of is in the arctic. It is Iceland, and it is tundra. We will set out in winter and when we get there we will wait months for the sun to come up. And in the early morning we will gaze at the clear frozen snow around us.

Julian, I’ve missed you. As the weather gets colder, it become harder and harder to drag myself out from under the warmth of my bed and into the day. But the days, when I get to them, swallow me whole. The sun doesn’t set until 6:54 tonight.

Yours,
Celia

_________________________________________
Julian,

You really do think the brain is not filled with cotton and dust. You said it was neurons and electrical wires. Yours- maybe. Yours is clinical in a way I don’t think mine is.

Clinical. What a stark word, conjuring empty, shiny hallways of tile. Is that what the recesses, the folds and overlaps of the tissues of your brain, is that what they look like? Tile? Tiles crunching against each other, breaking against their own brittle and, yes, clinical bodies. Yes, that is the sound I hear coming from your temples when you think.

Julian, are you coming home soon? I have decided that Iceland is an imperative. I have been thinking about the whales and the wolves. Tomorrow, I think, will be my new year.

Yours,
Celia

________________________________
Julian,

Everyone around me is making decisions. I have decided on some things, too. It’s been a long time, Julian, and I ache for your face.

I remembered what you said about the wolves and the whales, and I think you are right. Whale’s blood is so thick with iron and oxygen it’s almost black.

Yours,
Celia

_________________________________________________
Julian,

I looked in a forgotten cupboard this evening when I got out of bed. There was dust in it and it reminded me of you. I swept all the dust right up and put it in an envelope, which I placed on the windowsill. I like to imagine myself in a long skirt pouring you out, into the ocean from the brink of the earth, the wind whipping around me and carrying you off.

I’m just joking. But today I went to seaside and ate sandy things. I made a list of things that are salty: crackers, French fries, sweat, the base of my spine after a long day, the sea. I asked many people for directions on my way. I do not know my own way to the sea, as they say in folktales. But I have often felt that the sea has visited me at our home.

Julian, I think you should know that I have stopped waiting. Instead, I have begun to live our life together. When will join me? I have many things to whisper in your ear. For example, I might say your name, to remind you of it. But I think mostly it would be to remind myself.

Yours,
Celia

______________________________________________
Julian,

It is time you start telling me the truth.

Yours,
Celia


Julian,

I am, as you know, at my most honest in the early mornings on the tundra of Iceland. And that is, coincidentally, where I find myself now. So here is the fact. I have forgotten what you look like. And this terrifies me.

Continue to write to me. Continue to confuse and beguile me. It keeps me open and awake to the world, to have such pages to struggle for and to be always aching for your words. Do not forget that whatever we may have built, though it may not be what I would like to resemble, is in fact real, and tangible, and that it is an ocean of ink in which we float and execute the butterfly with precision.

Yours,
Celia

_______________________________
Julian,

I understand that you have left me for good. Your friend, in the uniform, told me this morning over the phone.

I would like for these letters to be cremated with you. This correspondence is something strong and formidable. Do not disregard it, do not throw it away or forget its existence- ever. To do so would be to forget possibility and excitement and longing. And poetry; because what we have built in these pages is nothing but poetry- letters on a page deftly arranged to scare and to comfort, to dissolve and inspire.

Please write back quickly, they need to know what to do with your body, and I feel that I might die if I don’t hear from you soon.

Yours,
Celia