A Love Letter

Anne was an addicted consumer of sight and sound (and touch).

Gluttonous for the music of the street, she shivered by an open window and drank from the life of the city below. Shouts and sirens and motorbikes, once threatening, now just spoke to living and moving and being. Songs came and went with the changing of the lights–some she knew, some she didn’t.

And the sweetest sounds of all when the sun was setting and setting fire to the tops of the buildings and people leaned from their windows and fire escapes cheering and clapping and banging on pots with wooden spoons. To honour the frontline.

In this war.

Of endless summer.

Still night falls.

The distant shape of a woman, silhouetted against orange light, turned to pitch black with the draw of the curtains. Drawn on another night that will lead still to endless days, endless summer.

Anne wondered, did anyone look into her window? And if so, what did they see? What was her channel? What was the purpose of her broadcast?

Lovelorn, lustful, lonely, exhausted, quiet and still. The days took no certain shape, yet held more colour than those days of office work and cruelty.

They were okay.

(A light comes on in a kitchen. On and then off again. One last thing to be procured before midnight.)

But what did she give back from all she consumed? When she drank of his cool, blue comfort. When she kept vigil as a greedy voyeur. And could only wring hands and bang pots over the frontline. Heart full, what was she ever giving?

Midnight.

And the dark sky takes on a lavender hue because some lights here never go out and the city is still aching for touch.

We all ache and break and put the pieces back together in the morning. If we’re lucky still to see the dawn.

A love letter.

A love letter to this beautiful place is all Anne can offer. So she tenders it into the night, the aching midnight.

She sends her words away on the ill wind.

Hoping some will.

Land.

xW

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