Chris,

I’ve sent a package of letters to Port Elizabeth, South Africa, c/o of the postmaster there. They should have arrived a week or two ago, but I knew you wouldn’t be there yet, so I’m just now writing to tell you.

I’m still not ready to email, which is why I sent you the letters. Respond in kind, if you’re so inclined. Or don’t.

Christian,

I’m losing my mind, and I don’t know how to stop it. I shouldn’t be writing to you, but I am. I’m friendless, loveless, and lifeless. You’re out there somewhere, and still you’re all I really have. I hate my reliance and dependence on you, emotionally and otherwise, and that reliance is something I’m coming to recognize. Since you’ve been gone, I’ve had to learn how to do so many things. You’ve always taken care of me. It’s the little things, honestly. The way you’d always wake up first, make coffee, and bring me a cup in bed before going on a run or heading into your office to write. Now, I have to make my own coffee. Some mornings, I still wake up and expect to smell coffee brewing. Expect to see you with my favorite mug in hand, a smile on your handsome face, set the mug on my bedside table and kiss me stupid.

You left me breathless, most mornings. And then you’d leave, just like that, and I’d be all breathless and turned on and crazy, and you were just oblivious. Did you know that sometimes, if I was horny enough, after you kissed me and left like you always did, I would touch myself? It’s a dirty little secret of mine. I’d masturbate thinking of you, usually of the last time we fucked.

Another dirty little secret: I still masturbate and think of you. I shouldn’t, I sometimes think. You’re probably fucking that French deckhand, but I’m not ready for a man, yet. I’m still hung up on you. The thought of going to a bar and picking someone up seems…well, for one, like a lot of damn work. Also, just stupid. I mean, I’d have to get all done up, wearing something sexy—and I don’t feel sexy—and then I’d have to find a spot and let a guy come chat me up and let him take me back to his place and I’d have to decide whether to go through with it. I most likely wouldn’t be able to. I’d freeze up, I’d panic. I’d…dammit, I’d think of you. I’d think of us.

You, above me. My feet on your shoulders, your thick cock driving into me, filling me, making me crazy. I can’t come like that, and you know it. I need clit stimulation, but it doesn’t take a lot of that to make me come. So you’d fuck me until you were close, and then I’d touch myself and I’d come. I’m a screamer. You said, once, that I sometimes leave your ears ringing, because I’d bite your earlobe and scream into your ear as I came.

Do you remember the time you made me squirt? God, that was so fucking hot. We were both pretty tipsy. We’d been bingeing The Walking Dead, and you just looked at me, and that was it. One look was all it took. You set down the popcorn and took my wineglass from me. I know you remember this. I pretended to be more drunk than I was, and acted like I wasn’t sure what was going on, what you wanted. Surprised when you ripped off my yoga pants, shocked when you tore my shirt off. I giggled—not faked at all, by the way—when you dragged off my underwear and tugged my tits out of my bra. Too impatient to unclasp it, I guess. You ate me out. Right there on the couch. You were fully clothed, and you just…you fucking devoured me. You used your fingers inside me, scraping and rubbing my G-spot and your tongue circled around my clit wildly. I screamed and screamed and screamed. You made me come four times in a row and wouldn’t let up, and I just kept coming like a string of firecrackers, except each one was a stick of dynamite. Your fingers went crazy, and I was clenching like a vise and just coming and screaming, and you didn’t stop. And then your mouth got tired, I suppose, so you used your hands, your fingers inside me and the heel of your palm on my clit, and the next orgasm was a little longer in arriving, but when it did, it was a nuclear detonation compared to the dynamite explosions before.

I came, screaming, hoarse, and a stream squirted out of me and splattered your chest. I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it. Everything inside me was squeezing, under insane pressure, so much heat, so much tension ratcheting through me. I broke apart. That’s what that felt like. An orgasm so powerful it was painful, a true shattering.

When I could breathe again, when I could move again, I yanked your dick out of your pants and climbed on you and clung to you as I rode you to your own orgasm. There was no finesse, no changing positions or slow rolling or leaning back to ride you so my tits could bounce for you. I clung to you for dear life and fucked your orgasm out of you as hard and fast as I could, so I could feel your cum inside me.

I fucking miss that, Chris. You, inside me.

Your cum dripping out of my pussy, sliding down my thighs as I walk to the bathroom to clean up. Do you think of that? Or have you moved on? Are you filling that French girl’s pussy with your cum? Am I just a wayside memory? Something from the past?

Now I’m horny from writing that. I’m going to go masturbate. And yes, Christian, I’m going to think of you. I’m going to picture your cock inside me. I’m going to imagine sucking your dick, and taking your cum on my chest. Tasting you, half-drunk, before fucking you into oblivion.

Oh, the things I’m going to do to you…

In my dreams. In my imagination.

And yes, Christian, I do wish it could be reality.

But then I’d have to face my other emotions toward you, and those are ferociously complex.

Chaotically yours, but still yours (for now…)

Ava

* * *

Chris,

I cannot make sense of my hatred for you. It conflicts with my continuing love. Even now as I write, I can feel myself channeling you, writing like you. My sentences sound like yours. I don’t like it. The longer we’re apart, the more messed up about everything I get.

I really do hate you. HATE. But it’s a complicated hatred. It’s not a hatred like I’d have for a cheating ex, or one of those nasty, vicious, gossiping popular girls I went to high school with, or someone who abuses children or animals. It’s not like that. It’s…god, I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out. That’s what this letter is going to be. It may be a rambling mess, but it’s all I know how to do to make sense of this.

YOU FUCKING LEFT ME. That’s an enormous part of it. You sold off property, arranged for bills to be auto-paid, bought a sailboat, and left me. Yes, I get it. You were dying. You were contemplating suicide. I was all but catatonic and then unresponsive to you and then just downright cold. OUR SON DIED. How was I supposed to deal? Couldn’t you have just gotten a condo on the other side of town? Or gotten a houseboat? Or a sailboat, but stayed, like, within 3 miles of me? I needed you. I know, I know, I fucking know—my actions demonstrated the opposite, but I was crumbling. Shattered. Dead inside. My son—our son—had died. I held him in my arms as he died, Chris. He was just a baby. His death ruined me. I didn’t know how to continue. How to keep living. I wanted to die. That’s why I stopped eating, you know—hoping I’d die. Instead, I slimmed down to a weight I haven’t been since high school. But I didn’t die. I never thought about suicide in the sense of shooting myself or cutting my wrists or something. It just never even entered my head—I just…I wanted to not be alive anymore, without having to kill myself. I don’t know how else to put it. Life without Henry was—and is—utterly barren. I still some days wish I could just not wake up. Keeping sleeping. Join Henry in the darkness of never.

You’ll love that turn of phrase.

I hate you for leaving.

I hate you for being able to leave in the first place. It’s a separate thing. It’s…you being able to sail away from me at all. I know I pushed you away, blamed you for things that weren’t your fault, acted like I hated you, because I did. I needed someone to blame, and you were it. But I thought…FUCK, I thought you could take it. That you’d forgive me and we would find a way to heal together, Chris. I needed time. I needed you to keep loving me. To keep supporting me. I needed you. I just needed you. I needed you to know that I still loved you, still needed you, still craved your presence, even when I acted as if the opposite was true.

It’s not fair. I know that. It’s not fair of me to have expected that of you, to expect you to understand all that without even a single hint of any of it. I KNOW, okay? I do. But it’s still my truth. I needed you.

And you sailed away from me.

You planned it all out. It wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. You went through a lot of preparation to do it right. To take care of me even as you left me. How could you do that? I just don’t get it.

I hate you for calling me on Christmas, because it was exactly what I wanted, what I needed, and nowhere near enough. I need to scream in your face and slap you and rage and rage and rage. I need to anger-fuck you. I need to shove you down on the floor and claw you bloody and ride you until neither of us can move or breathe, and then I need to slap you and curse you and be angry some more. And then I need you to kiss me and hold me and comfort me and tell me—

Tell me—

Tell me I’m not alone anymore, Chris.

TELL ME I’M NOT ALONE ANYMORE.

I’m alone.

I don’t want to be alone.

I hate you because I’m alone. I’m so goddamn lonely, and it’s your fault.

I know it’s mine too. But I hate you for it.

I hate you calling me on Christmas, because for a moment, I heard your voice and it was all okay. I heard your voice, and I was home. You were calling me from the store, to ask me which kind of spaghetti sauce you should get. Which wine to get. How many packages of ground beef we need. If I wanted you to get rocky road ice cream, chocolate peanut butter, or both. But instead, you were calling from some isolated godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere, with no intent of ever returning, and you were wishing me a merry fucking Christmas.

Related: I hate that I still love and find comfort in the sound of your voice. When you called, when I first said hello, and you said hello back…that moment of forgetting before reality set in, the sound of your voice was all I needed to be okay. I hate that the sound of your voice can turn me on, can comfort me, can bring me back in time, can soothe me and wash over me like waves of sonic love.

I hate you for that too.

I hate you for taking that French girl on the boat with you. I have this feeling something happened with her. I can only guess, but that guess is a knife in my gut. I know I shouldn’t let emotions fly over a conjecture, or a feeling in my stomach, but there’s no one to talk me out of it.

Most of all, I hate that I can’t hate you as much as I want to. I hate that I still fucking love you so much.

I hate that there’s no clear solution to our conundrum. Even if we could forgive each other, what then?

I hate you, Christian. I really do.

But most of all, I don’t.

It’s complicated.

Complicatedly (still) yours,

Ava

* * *

I went on a date—I went on several dates.

With my therapist. Who is now no longer my therapist—he referred me to a colleague, a female. A better choice for me, overall. She’s a divorcee, a survivor of sexual abuse, a marathon runner, and a crossfit athlete, as well a licensed physiologist and therapist. I admire her, and I respect her. She listens, and she forces me to confront my bullshit head-on.

My former therapist, Craig, he’s good-looking. Funny. Quiet and reserved, but when he finally loosens up a bit, he’s a lot of fun. We went for Italian and then drinks afterward, and I had a lot of fun. More fun than I ever thought I’d be able to have.

I lied to Craig, though. I told him you and I had gotten a divorce, because I knew he wouldn’t go out with me otherwise.

He didn’t kiss me, or try to.

Truth? If he’d have kissed me, I’d have let him. I’d have kissed him back. I’m desperate for physical attention, affection, for touch. He was a gentleman, though.

And then we went out again, and he still didn’t try to kiss me.

A third time, no kiss.

And then, on the fourth date, he kissed me. It went from zero to sixty instantly, from a hesitant first kiss to clothes coming off in my foyer. I told you I’d tell you if anything happened, so that’s what this is: Something happened, Christian.

He kissed me, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. He touched me. Groped my boobs and my ass, got my shirt and skirt off, had my bra off, and his hands were warm and strong and his kisses were eager.

I touched him, Christian.

I had his cock in my hand, and I was stroking him. Kissing his mouth, and enjoying his touch, and thinking yeah, I can do this.

And then…it all went wrong.

Nothing he did, though. It was all me. I was touching him, stroking him, and his cock just…didn’t feel right. Didn’t fit in my hand the way yours does. He didn’t move the way you move. Didn’t groan the way you groan. He didn’t touch me the way you touch me. My skin didn’t light on fire the way it does when you touch me. My heart didn’t palpitate. My brain didn’t short out. I couldn’t lose myself in it the way I lose myself in our touch. I couldn’t do it.

I told him to stop, and he did.

I told him I was sorry, that it wasn’t going to work, that I wasn’t ready; he said he totally understood, no big deal.

It was a big deal though.

I told him I’d lied, that you and I hadn’t divorced, and that we hadn’t even discussed it or anything. He said he knew, or rather, that he strongly suspected.

I told him I didn’t think I could go out with him again, because I just…I’m not ready.

And once again, he was understanding. Polite. Sweet.

Once upon a time, you would have fought for me.

If you wanted me and I was dating someone else or separated from someone, you wouldn’t have stopped until you’d gotten me to leave them for you.

Now, you’re just gone.

Damn you.

And fuck you.

You possess me, Christian. You possess me in the sense that you own me, you have me, in that I am yours; you also possess me in the sense that you are like a fucking poltergeist inside me. I cannot exorcise you from within me. I’m trying, goddammit, but I can’t.

I hate you for this as well.

Damn you,

Ava

* * *

Chris

I nearly called you just now. It’s 4am and I’m hammmered. Drunk too much wine. Malbec. You’re favorite wine. I want to talk to you. Your stupid voice makes me feel all bettre. I’m so drunk damm it. Typing is hard the letters on the keyboard keep swimming. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, what do we do we swim swim swim. That’s all I’m doing is swimming. Just keep swimming, just like Dory. I’m not strong enough, Chris.

I had your number dialed, all 134094h9948uu4 digits of it. It took like five minutes just to dial that stupid phone number. I had my thumb on the little green phone symbol and then I didn’t push it. I refuse to drunk dial you. I’d break down. I’d ask you to come home. I’d tell you how fukcing much I fukcing love you. I’d cry. I’d tell you how bad I need your dick. It’s like drug withdrawal, only for your penis. That’s a metaphor. I don’t mean just your penis. I mean all of you. You fucking me. That’s the thing I’m in withdrawal from. Just you. Stupid, amazing, beautiful, talented, kind, loving, thoughtful, big dick and talented tongue and incredible hands—YOU.

YOU>

Instead of calling you I opened my laptop and I’m writing this. I’m going to hate reading it in the morning, or whenever I figure out how to get out of bed and operate my body again. I drunk three bottles of wine. All by muself. Thinking about stupid you, stupid Christina. Have I told you lately that I hate you? Because I hate you.

I’m so goddammed lonely.

AVA. This is to you, Ava. When you read this, do what you’re telling yourself to do. SEND THIS LETTER TO CHRIS. He needs to read it. For because of reasons. I can’t make anysense any no more. Words ar4e hard.. But it’s important. Chris has to read this.

So he knows what he’s doing to m.e

I’m not strong enoug.gh

Good night nobody.

* * *

Christian,

I’m including that drunk letter. I was right: you do need to read it. You need to read all of these. I wonder if you’ll write back. If you’re writing to me.

Knowing you, you’re probably doing something melodramatic and stupid and romantic, like writing journal entries but calling them letters to me you’ll never send. You probably have a fancy name for them too. What’s that bible term for letters? Epistles. I would bet all the bottles of wine in the rack—23 bottles: 10 cab sav, 6 malbec, 6 pinot noir, and 1 merlot—that you’re writing a bunch of “epistles” to me, but not really to me. You’ll vent your bullshit into those letters and never send them. And then, in a fit of rash impulse, you will. And you’ll regret it, because you’re violently private about your journals. If you’ve written it for a novel, you’ll let others read it, but a journal entry? You’d die first.

I’m doing the same thing, writing down my most tumultuous, complicated, messy, emotional private inner thoughts and addressing them to you. The difference is, I’m sending them to you. I have the manila envelope addressed already, to the postmaster in Port Elizabeth where you said you’d be. When I decide I’ve got enough letters to send, I’m folding them like real letters, and stuffing them into the envelope, and I’m taking the package to the post office and stamping it and sending it.

I can’t take much more of this, Christian. I’m in hell. Life is hell. Living is pain. Loneliness is agony. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know much longer I can take things as they are. No, suicide will never be an option for me. What will I do? Shave my head, get a bunch of tattoos, and join a band? I’ve thought about that. I love singing. I could do it. Sell everything and take the cash and drive away? Where would I go? Vegas? LA? New York? Probably Boulder, Colorado or Portland, Oregon, where pot is legal. I think I might try pot again. It went badly for me the last time I tried it, but becoming a stoner sounds like fun. A nice escape. Something to drown myself in. Become a shut-in stoner. Watch daytime TV all day—which I already do—eat shitty food—which I don’t do, yet, I’m still too health conscious for that—and smoke marijuana all damn day. Write rambling and elaborate blog posts and maybe another novel. My prose would probably be improved.

In all likelihood, I’ll probably just sell everything and start over somewhere. I’d pick a small town, somewhere obscure. Sedgwick, Maine; Port Arthur, Texas; Eureka, California.

All of those are by the sea. I never even Google Earth-ed anywhere not on the ocean.

That’s your fault, too, probably.

I spend a lot of time on the beach, staring out at the sea, like an old sea-wife, hoping for a glimpse of your ship returning home.

God, I’m losing it. I’m losing it.

* * *

Desperation is a discordant song within me: the warm-up of a symphony.

I am undone.

Wilderness is my soul.

Flight, feral and of muted voice.

Let me off this mad calliope,

give me stable breath and solid world and brazen unvarnished truth.

Laughter.

Hot wild mad sex in the deeps of endless night.

Screams in the dark, heat in my belly spearing through my veins and boiling effervescent into my skin and muscles and

building like a tsunami approaching shore, becoming a violent release.

This

Give me this.

I need it.

You do not. Cannot. You are not here to give me this. You are nowhere and thus I am nowhere

Thus I am nothing

Thus I may only perish, one day at a time

Reality is a shitstained shadow I cannot evade.

Hatred is exhausting.

You

You

You you

You you you

FUCK YOU

I LOVE YOU

I FUCKING LOVE YOU

But god I hate you

God, I hate you

This is as close to breathing as I can get:

gasps in the dark,

waking in the moonless starless silent succumbing drowning depths of an endless night from which I cannot wake,

from which there is no escape—i sigh, and I gasp, and I die, and I wake still alive, hating it

every single moment of life because life is pain and life is loneliness and love is a sham and a lie and

These words pour out, a waterfall, a deluge, a soul-scouring acid-bath.

It is four in the morning and I cannot sleep, as I have not slept since—

Since

Him—

Since the harsh knifing scything flatline beep in the tear-humid

purgatory

of the

Pediatric Oncology Ward

Where I died

Where you died

Where we died

Where the once vibrant dancing brilliant hopeful animated being that was US

Died

Everything died that day

And then I died again when you stepped from the sundrenched dock wood onto the fleeing deck of your escape

I am a wraith.

I am a shadow lost amid a wilderness of ghosts.

Mothwings beat in the silvergraced gleam of the gloaming;

THEY are alive.

A frog belches throaty somewhere under my bedroom window,

calling for his mate;

She intones her reply in a hopeful chirrup;

THEY are alive.

A bat flits silently, tipping and tumbling and devouring and agile;

Something enormous and dark breasts the waves,

far out, spraying plume skyward;

The shadows, the stars, the moon, insects in the grass,

people sleeping next door

and across the street

and around the city;

THEY are alive.

I am a lichyard creature

shuffling and dragging myself between mossy headstones,

suffering a pretense of half-life.

I wish, I wish, I wish, Christian,

I wish it was harder to blame you.

I wish it was easier to forgive you.

I wish it was easier to forgive myself,

The universe,

God,

Fate,

Life.

There is no forgiveness.

Only suffering:

my capacity for suffering is maxed out,

the architecture of my soul is nothing but a pile of rubble and ruin.

I have nothing left, Christian.

nothing

left