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I would have liked to begin this letter of mine with a “My dear Will” but given the most recent events, I fear I must opt for a terminology that would make the right corner of your lip curl in that way only you can manage - when something pleases you and you would rather it didn’t, because it brings you embarrassment and disgust.
And so I imagine you sitting on that bench, the polished wood creaking under the weight of your body as it slowly sways, your darting eyes following the brushstrokes of the large painting hanging on the wall. At last, the rude footsteps of a group of tourists pull your attention away from those paths of color. Your gaze then falls upon my envelope, resting near your hand. Its corner has long been brushing your little finger, yet you did not notice this irreverent caress of mine.
You know I left it there: you recognize the refinement of the material, a heavy, frayed paper, scented with cedar, sealed with burgundy wax. And so, without even turning around, aware that you would not catch even a fleeting shadow of me, you open it and draw out the sheet enclosed within.
And this is how that letter begins and ends: “My beloved,” because each man kills the thing he loves.
You are atrocious and magnificent when you see the emptiness of that page, which contains no words beyond the incipit. You know it is your sentence, that the execution has already taken place long ago and that you cannot seek salvation. You lick your lips, the taste of the coffee you drank in the crowded museum bistrot bitterly tickling your tongue. You know your time will soon end, because you recognized Wilde’s quote, and you know that I am like him, in the prison of Reading. Though in truth my bars are not real, but imagined: those that you and the others have scattered along my path. But I do not wish to dwell on this now.
Once we spoke of poets and you told me, fascinated, about Thomas Chatterton: how you felt akin to him, in his eternal search for lost eras, his walks among the graves of English cemeteries and his antiquated verses. That evening, when you returned home after sharing with me our usual meal, I searched for the image you had so masterfully described, the one painted by Henry Wallis. I was struck to discover that the young man, dead - it is said - by suicide or by mistake, resembled you in appearance as well. The diaphanous skin, the honey-brown chestnut curl, even the outdated cut of his clothes.
Since then, I have been haunted by the vision of your body lying among crumpled poems, lit by the warm light of morning - that amber light that only falls that way in an attic, from a dormer window, colliding with dust motes in a Hungarian waltz. Perhaps aided by this fantasy, which I do not deny having revisited in murky and divine moments, I decided I should grant you grace by leading you to the altar of Hades by the same method.
To take a life with arsenic might sound to many like an excessively romantic gesture, bordering on the decadent, decidedly kitsch. To them I say: you are right. But do you not deserve the palest death, one that can be translated into verses? You are, my beloved, an evanescent moon that appears effervescent in the dark. You fizz irreverently down my dry throat, refreshing what has been scorched by too much talking to our usual fools. Yet you, in the dry night at the bottom of the wine, paint reflections I would like to lick from the glass.
Your dark circles are sickles and ploughs tracing deep and desolate furrows across the fertile and luminous, languid land of your marsh-like eyes. There I walk slowly, my legs like mangrove roots sinking into the green earth, and I let myself sink into the bubbling turmoil of your ill-fated and confused thoughts, which I love precisely for their improper and unseemly nature. You are the dreamlike bayou of rituals of blades and mirrors, a sticky tangle of little bones and skins and feathers and swollen genitals in which I bathe and baptize myself.
I adore nothing more than your tongue when it rolls reckless words upon the half-lit stage of your palate, when in a low voice you whisper curses against deities or earthly entities. I like your being cruel, and if I use this childish word, it is by choice, for cruelty is far more admirable than wickedness, its counterpart that requires deep preparation and the games of an architect. Cruelty, instead, is innate.
I, unlike you, am wicked. Mine is a choice, one I impose upon myself every day to obtain pleasure or amusement, an attitude I have learned for survival. By now, I wallow in my putrid wickedness, admiring the clear sincerity of your cutting words. Yes, I love letting myself be cut to pieces by what you murmur, lit by a candle and to the rhythm of cutlery clinking on the table.
And I would have cut you to pieces as well, soft pieces and pieces that teeth should shred with carnivorous instinct. And certainly, for my amusement, I would have made of you a puzzle to be reassembled within the intestine. But I do not want to assimilate you. Perhaps I must lose you completely to move forward along my path.
To devour you would have always made you my prisoner within my ribcage, and everywhere your cells would have travelled within me like those tiny swamp fireflies of Louisiana. And I wish to remain dark and with nothing and without stars and wicked. Your cruel innocence - I could not, I could never have it within me and survive this.
But I imagine that by now, at this point in the letter, you are already lying sprawled on the bench, illuminated by the theatrical light falling from the skylight of the great hall. Your lips are parted, and no breath passes between your teeth. Your glassy eyes stare at the sun, your hand slipping down from the bench, as if to grasp the letter now fallen to the ground.
I clutch the coffee cup in the pocket of my coat. It has not shattered, yet, my beloved.