Dear Jane,

It’s been so long since we’ve spoken. As always, thank you for listening— you’ve been such a wonderfully undeserved partner. It might interest you to know that I’ve broken another. I know we talked about stopping, and I promised you I’d improve, and since then, the mask has even slipped a little. Only once, but it felt nice. Now it’s plastered tight, congealed in perfect union with my flesh, and I think it might never come off again.

Anyways, how’ve you been? Odd that they call it a funeral parlor— what a strange choice of words. But I suppose the home where the dead go to die must, on principle, be a peculiar place. I thought I missed you, but now that we’re reunited, I’m reminded of the claustrophobia. It hurts me, you know, to be this way. Intertwined with you, extricated from them. And why did it have to be this way? Inheritance? Or inevitability? Forgive me, I wander. I asked about you, and here I am talking about myself. I babble ever onwards until finally, all the bridges are cinder and crisp and regret, and you and I are reunited, and voilà, the deed is done again. Another scar added to my bloody tapestry, another stone in the sack.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Now that we’re here, I might as well finish; I float adrift on a sea of shifting whims, pulled forever vacillating by some unknowable moon. I ran into one of them yesterday, my scars. She asked me if I recognized her, and I said I did not, though I did. She looked like you, although I suppose they all do. They bare the face, if not the features. Darling, I’m so desperately tired, don’t you know? It might be another hundred years until I write again, but at least I’ve got you to keep me company. Perhaps then I’ll let you talk.

Yours, always and forever.