I, Kaleb Worst, being a proudly hopeless romantic, pride myself especially with my romantic letter-writing skills, which requires a delicate blend of raw desire, silence, and that all-too-unknowable feeling that the world beneath our feet can somehow be given to a single person, for at least one night.
The sheer willpower of the letter-writer should never be underestimated. It requires a great deal of caffeine and brainwashing to convincingly pen down words like “forever” and “always,” which, like a lonely tide pool, may be full of water under the white wash of the moon, and yet be dried up completely the following morning. A professional letter-writer such as myself knows to avoid the tiny eyes of the sky and to keep my nose dipped in ink.
I admit, however, that I am new to the trade, and it will probably always feel that way. My first muse was a mousy-faced girl who sometimes wore her hair in shimmering curls; I developed a code using erratic symbols and illustrations to first write the words “I love you,” before I began using my own private code to describe the sheer pain; the crying into my pillow that sometimes slipped in at night.
That was all sticks and stones then, though who would know it. I first began honing the fine, fine craft of letter-writing years later, when my best friend flew over the Atlantic Ocean, to begin a family tour across the great span of Europe for two months that left me quite disheartened. And during these two agonizing months, I promised that I would write a letter for every night I was alone. It was those empty nights that I first filled my letters with buoyant, jubilant words, which whispered a promise to me that I never would have guessed was unfaithful.
That was my initiation, my spirit walk, my going naked into the woods with nothing but a dull knife and a heavy heart, and since then, I still haven’t found my way out. After all, it’s incredibly difficult to have a spiritual vision when your spirit animal changes every other night.
So now I, the battered and starving letter-writer, have met you, who is, unsurprisingly, unlike any girl that I have ever met. Except much more so. And because through luck, fate and our stunning good looks we have been brought together, I did only what I have been trained to do, and at the desecrated foot of your driveway, I penned a beautiful letter in the moonlight that, beyond shadows and clouds of doubt, definitely freaked you out. I am always new to the trade. The letter-writer never gets very much right. He only guesses at things until something crystallizes: a rhapsodizing image, a word with a grain of truth.
Although there is one thing that the letter-writer is terribly good at, which is simply accepting whatever fate is imposed on him. So if I have been wandering in the deserted wood, searching for my next possible revelation, in whatever form or shape it will take, and suddenly you should step smiling out of the underbrush and into the quiet clearing, gentler than a white rabbit and more beautiful than a silver dawn, I will say “Yes” to that and feel happy and grateful to have met you. And if the world should remind me that our days together are numbered, I will say “Okay” and throw open the windows. After all, I am always learning something new, and this time it is that if I were ever able to give you the world for one night, you would refuse to take it. Because how could you give it up once it’s yours? Though there is something for you to learn, too: If writing be the prayer of love, then you must know now that I am deeply religious. And in spite of this, I pray that for long as we are in the same state you allow me to hold your hand, because letter-writing really is nothing anyway but a lame and misguided attempt to fit my hand inside of yours, by using words that could even tear apart the moon.
Yours,
Kaleb Worst
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