My dear friend

My dear friend,

We live so far apart these days, though it wasn’t always so. For a short time, we were tied alongside one of life's safe harbours.

Sitting in a soulless building eating lunchtime sandwiches, the summer sun beating through the windows from May until September, we somehow recognised each other in the echoes of our words.  Laughed together.  The silent conversation of our eyes moving faster than our thoughts. 

So we stole those moments, began comparing notes.  My scribblings on a thousand scraps of paper, most lost amongst the crap that moved from Leeds to London, beneath abandoned sofas, beds.  You read your poems and thoughts from the neatly written pages of your book and I began to learn.

But I’ve lost this thing in wanderings that don’t add anything to what I’m trying to tell you. 

How does one appreciate this truth, brother, this soul that, anywhere it wanders, on whatever stage, removed from all it's ever known, is a replica of life injected into the corruption of shit and piss that walks upon this earth, thinking?

Well, to tell the truth, I don’t know where I am.

So now I read this letter and I think of mine, pushed across the counter yesterday and dropped into a postbag, somewhere in a ghetto.  Sam has never let me down.  Everything I’ve given him has found its address somewhere in the world, Spain, Malawi, Italy.

I think about the night I landed, on my own, in Lombardy.  Picked up my beloved case and strolled into Arrivals.  Beers on the concourse.  I love those trips on airport buses.  Love the warm night air.  It’s where I belong.  Born upon damp northern earth – among these mists.  But longing to be scratched from its canvas.  To be drawn in sultry cities.  An exotic dream.  A year or two from now I’ll be bored to hell and moving on again.

We entered the apartment.  Hugged your rock – one of life’s great souls.  What more could anyone need?  Breathed your air for five nights.  Walked up your hill and sat upon your benches, watching schoolchildren play, drawing lazy balconies on gazing hills.  Fell upon your table, ate your food. 

We argued.  Ripped the guts from everything, spilled our blood upon the polished floor.  Beat our precious skulls and dashed our thoughts – watched our friendship drain into the gutter.  Walked back home in silence.  I stared at the ceiling, wished myself into this flat.

One final terracotta morning.  Walked and sat upon the hill.  There we talked in emptiness. You took me to the bus stop where we hugged unashamed and intimate like lovers as the girl watched from her seat.  I made the empty terminal we’d observed from on the hill.  Stark, sterile and precise.

Distance re-established its authority.

No more letters – only curiosities.  A fear that embers, untended, would surely die. Asides and awkward words, behind which feelings lie.  We were angels, shining and immaculate.  Ultimately soiled. And time passes.

Now, pages pulled from a familiar envelope, crossing mine.  That line we shared (“THIS one”).  The privilege of reading these thoughts.

Somewhere, everywhere, in a million universal dreams, we exist in lives of stars.

As long as there’s a postbox on a hill.  A sky to fill with vapour-trails and something left to say.  As long as blood beats in our ears and dreams carry on a rising draft of air.  As long as light can find us in the emptiness of being, there’ll be a letter in my hand to send to you. 

Your friend,

Always.