moth's powder (some more would-be fiction)

11.thursday.04

dear moth's powder,

remember the Moleskine i gave you as a gift some time ago? i figured since i was not the one you ultimately chose, each time you wrote, you could still think of me, if only very faintly, me crossing your mind as ephemera, forgetting almost sooner than remembering, so that you may continue writing because i didn't matter so much to you anyway. i buy Moleskines much too much, i pretend that they make me into a writer - a serious writer - but my handwriting is so bad that i never know what i'd written in the first place. i think i bought you the grid one, the one that sort of has that "hard science" quality to it, makes me think of everything you might have possibly written therein as somewhat, somehow more intentional and direct and empirical than anything i'd ever write you. do you ever even use it?

i remember the first one i purchased, some time ago now, probably while trying to become a serious writer while in undergrad after engineering and music and everything else i thought i'd study that interested me failed. i kept hearing my high school english teacher in the back of my mind encouraging me - work on that writing craft; you will always need it! - but i didn't know how right she was until i began to write...seriously. so yeah, i bought the first one around my senior year in undergrad around about the time i began to break the news to people that i was not who they suspected i was and that i really did like boys even though i lied and said i didn't when i was confronted about it when i was a freshman but it really wasn't a lie as much as it was something i wanted to be true but it wasn't so i bought a Moleskine to help me out. you know, it was the smallish one, the one that has perforated pages in the back. i wrote small one pages notes to a few close friends on those perforated pages and would rip them out and place in the mailboxes for them to read. of course, this was before text messaging and email fully caught on. remember Telnet? of course you don't...you're too young.

so i used the Moleskine to facilitate some sort of coming out story or some such thing even though i really had no idea what i was coming out to or for what purpose exactly i just knew that the way i was living required me to at least tell the folks whom i loved to stop trying to get me to date Pam and Isha and Lori. no. anyway. so the Moleskine? it was just a way for me to seem professional while sharing a story. i still have that first one somewhere in my office, the first few pages with a couple of ideas scribbled here and here, with a couple of doodles from when i'd be bored in class or at a talk that my english professor mentor assumed i should attend if i wanted to be a serious contender for some sort of doctoral program. you need to meet people; they need to know you! - he'd say. i suppose he was right.

anyway. do you remember the Moleskine i gave you? i think i scribbled something on the inside of it telling you that i was proud of you or that i wanted you to always be you or that i was hopeful that you'd continue to write. i mean, i did mean all of that but i think you thought it was only me thinking of ways to make you think i wanted you because you thought that i only wanted you in bed. how untrue. it was, of course, the beginning of the first ending - we've had many, you know - and i'm quite over it, actually. which is why i promised never to write you again and yesterday and the day before i really meant it but know that i really mean it today because i will never buy you another Moleskine again. i don't care if you ever used it. (but have you?) did you even read what i wrote in it or did you smile at me pityingly - sweet, misguided boy - i'm sure you thought and still think? why am i even writing you? i've said everything that i've wanted to say so there is not much more to say to you at all. no.

well. it has been years since we have seen each other. and years since you have written back. and years since i've thought about sending you these letters in the armoire in my bedroom. i have so many of them - like Celie said - what us gon do? i should send them to you? but you were pretty clear the last time we communicated that we should never communicate again unless i wanted you to really be unhappy with the way things are in your life. are you even happy today? have you found peace? trite. this is all trite. i think once i'm done writing this that i'll rip out the page from the Moleskine - more difficulty this time because this one has no perforations - ball it up and throw it out. no one should see this. this should become sour with milk and butter and cheese and old meat and bills in some landfill never to be discovered again.

what was i saying again? oh. i hope that you have used the Moleskine. i still think the world of you. i still await your phone call. i have moved on, you best believe that. i am only concerned for you. for if you are unable to speak to me still - i know what i did was wrong, i really do - but if you are unable or unwilling, then you must be stuck back in the past and i cannot make up for it without you allowing me to do so. maybe you want to remain silent and angry because you don't know what is on the other side of that. neither do i. but could we at least try? well. i promise never to write again. this time is the last time i make this promise to you.

never again,

a.-