To Previous Owner

To Previous Owner (Lovely Cupids Service 2014)

Dear Whoever Had This Book Before Me,

I hold the book "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad, it has a number two in the upper-hand corner. It was once yours, person I'm writing to. It was recently purchased, I know that, so that means that you must have taken Literature at Boston College in the past three years. 

I write to you, previous holder of the number two copy of "Heart of Darkness", knowing that you will most likely never read this. 

That is not because I am afraid of sending it. No, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I have learned that it is better to live that way. I am not sending it because I do not know who to send it to.

If I knew your address, I would find your name, and I would search for you. If you were close, I'd try to talk to you face to face, maybe. Then I'd be able to give you this letter in your hands and I'd kiss you as hard as I could. I wouldn't even care if you had a significant other standing in the doorway of wherever I showed up, I would kiss you as hard as I could, and then, quite possibly, I'd leave (I would explain to your significant other that you didn't know me beforehand, I'm not a home-wrecker).

But I'd leave you with this letter in your hands. 

The problem with this? I do not know who you are, and I never will from what I can see. You did not write your name in the inside of the front cover of "Heart of Darkness", Professor Darelta does not keep numbers or records of who owned these books because "they cause clutter, and if I get all my books back I'm happy". There is no way for me to find you. 

But let me tell you this. I am in love with you. 

I don't even know your name. I don't know the basic things, whether you are taller or shorter, have freckles or not, are of another race or not, I know nothing about you. I don't care, I'm in love with you. 

I don't know if you are society's picture of beauty or not: and I say society's picture because I know you are beautiful. Your mind is strikingly gorgeous, therefor you must be too.

It's funny, for the first time in what I thought was my straight life, I do not care if you are male or female. I assume male by your handwriting, not because it's sloppy, no, but because it's jagged and edgy; most girls have curves to their handwriting, because in a women, curves are "always" pleasing. But I wouldn't care. If you were a woman and I marched to your door, I would still kiss you, and then like Katy Perry, I could say "I Kissed a Girl", but the funny thing is that I wouldn't like it, I'd love it, because I'd know I was kissing whoever wrote in the margins of this book. 

You are brilliant. Not because what you wrote provided me insight in whatever the Hell this dense book is about (it did, don't get me wrong) but because you weren't afraid to say what exactly what you were thinking in margins. Even though at times it made no help of the context, sometimes it was great to read. 

I especially loved the long mini story in the margins of the pages where Marlow (the main character if you don't remember) talks for an entire page about how his boat fell apart and they had to wait three months for the screws to fix it so they could keep going on. Your inner monologue shines so beautifully on the page (and it goes onto the next one, actually) that I read that over and over, it became my favorite two pages, even though it was most entirely the most boring set of pages of the actual book in all the pages of the novel.

Shall I quote it for you, if you don't remember it? 

"Who the Hell cares about this? Why do I need an entire page to tell me one thing? Marlow needs fucking bolts for his fucking ship so he can keep going to find Kurtz and kill him. That is the important thing. Marlow is driving to find Kurtz. Marlow must find Kurtz. It's Marlow's passion, and slowly coming his obsession. That is what I want to read. I want to read his mind whirl as he tries to find Kurtz. I want to hear him wail in agony when he realizes he cannot quite find him, I want his heart to quicken because as he gets closer to Kurtz, he's scared of what will happen when he meets him. I want him to notice how anticipation is almost more exciting than the actual thing. I want to read him feeling lost after he finds Kurtz and whatever the Hell happens between them is over. I want to read Marlow grip onto the line of his life as he goes through this adventure of people trying to kill him, and I want to read how he blew past every single obstacle like he was made of dynamite, only realizing the lives he took after he reaches his goal.