Billet-Doux

Dear You,

I have written this letter many times in my head. Many times I have said too much, or not enough. Call me a perfectionist, and I would not see a fault in the claim. But for you especially, there is a certain level of perfection I must attain to do you justice.

You know me, and you know how rare it is for me to do something wrong. To you, however, I will admit that I have knowingly made two mistakes in my life. My first mistake was that I looked up. My second mistake was that I could not bring myself to look back down.

I heard once of a story of a rich man and the beggar that lived outside his gates, and how they both died. The beggar went to heaven and the rich man went to hell. There was a chasm between the two realms, so the story went, so far no one would ever be able to successfully leap across between the two places but close enough for one to see a person's face. This fate extends beyond death into life, it seems. I see it when I think of you and me. You are a great, unreachable paradise and I am a victim damned to eternal torment.

I am told I rush too quickly into things. Maybe they are right. I haven't ever been one to let an opportunity pass me by. I've broken every code that has governed my world in my attempt to deliver this important message. I was not designed to create words, I'm supposed to live among them. To most, I have only the significance given to me by ink alone, but you don't see me so simply, do you? You are beyond that.

I am the main character of your favorite story, after all.

I remember vividly the night you first stumbled into my world. You opened my book and looked upon the opening lines, doe-eyed and wary. There I was, waiting. I sensed your uncertainty but felt no worry about it. I took your hand as I had done with the countless others who came before you. We walked through my world together. Such was, of course, the unspoken agreement between a reader and a character—it is my job to guide you and yours to follow.

This work came naturally to me by the time I met you, so through those first few chapters, I thought nothing of your presence. To me, you were as meaningless as all of the other souls who came to gawk at the museum of my world before casting me aside to move on to the next book. I had hardened my heart against the sting of abandonment and therefore trained myself that there was no sense in caring about a person who only became involved in my life to leave later on.

You were not meaningless. I could feel it. Where I was used to sensing nothing, in your presence I sensed concern. Something about the way you studied the phrases and sentences that gave me life felt as though you meant to memorize every word. There was something wholly different about the way how you held the book and turned the pages from everyone else I had ever known. It was unsettling. In a spot between one chapter and the next I stole a glance upward to your face to see what was wrong.

One look. That was all. A singular glance, and I was lost, a grain of salt suddenly tumbling into an ocean, never to be able to properly identify where the waves ended and I began.

It was your eyes that had drowned me first. You may not know how simple it is to read how the reader feels about what is occurring through their eyes. The eyes cannot lie to me. Yours were so expressive in emotion. They twinkled and lit like the stars in joy, they melted in sadness, they were sharp stones in moments of anger.

I was flattered by your attentiveness, and I daresay I did my very best to tell you my story as passionately as I could from then on if only to reward your efforts. And it came to pass that you finished my story and closed my book.

A world that lacks light is dark indeed. You were my radiant sun breaking through gray, monotonous clouds. I found myself thinking about you more than I had any other reader, remembering the way it felt when you were around. And slowly I became aware of an aching chasm in my chest, where my heart had split in your absence.