Letter of 7th of July, 1969

Dear Charlotte,

How are you? No, scratch that, that's horrible. That's too mudane, too boring.

I hope you're doing well.

Abad, you idiot, she can't be well, she's dead, she's gone, she killed herself. People who kill themselves aren't well.

I hope you're doing better. It's not very hard, I reckon, from what I've heard. But I still hope, that the place, where you're now is better than Deytonsbury, cleaner than your father's house, warmer than my hands ever were.

Today was such a good day. The sky was baby blue; they reminded me of your eyes. The town I'm living in right now is empty, shallow; it is like every other one in the south, like the tens I was in before and like the tens that will come.

It's what Deytonsbury was before I met you. Before you entered the shop with your tired smile and your dry humor before I used to daydream about white girls again.

I sell newspaper nowadays, you know? It's not as easy as it used to but it's enough to go by.

Anyways, maybe I should stop talking about myself and come straight to the point, tip toeing around it won't bring you back, after all. I wish it would tho. I wish my screams and my tears would let your heart beat again, I wish I could've told you that it wasn't your fault, I wish I could've convince you that life is still worth living.

I saw your name in the news paper, you know. Not on the front page, neither in the death announcements. It was a small paragraph, a few sentences, not even a photograph. When I read your name, I couldn't believe it. I thought, they finally decided that you should be the one representing us, America, humanity, I don't know, up there on the moon. Or that you earned that literature price at your school you kept telling me about. Or a thousand fantastical things that weren't your litteral death.

I was never as smart as you, Charlotte. Reading books and so forth. Funny, how I never went to school past grade six, right? How even writing this letter is hard for my rough hands, who normally use it to labour not for writing love letters to your grave when you use yours to write the most gut wrenching short stories of all time. You are a genius, a master of ink and paper,with all your painters who are closer my age than yours.

Why did I even write this? Abad stop this, you sound like a weird old gray bearded man when you write like that. "Closer my age than yours". What are you, a vampire or just a creep, who kidnaps younger girls?

I mean, you ARE a bit weird for loving her, you WERE too old, chronological speaking, you could have been her grandfather. Theoretical speaking. If you were American. And white.

Immortality isn't an excuse, you may look like her but you've lived nearly fifty years longer. She's young and white and you're old and coloured and that's it. And she's dead and you can never die. Great.

O Charlotte, I wish the world would've been kinder. I wish you stayed longer. I wish I did. I regret every day since then. Not only of the day you died but also the day I left. Maybe, if there was still someone there.

I love you. And the last days, I kept dreaming about what could've been. Us opening a dinner for everyone. Or you working as a kindergarten teacher, speaking gently and help them learning how to write. Or maybe a journalist, exposing all of our secret? You could've been everything, I promise you, Charlotte.

My mum, she was hindu, you know? I never told you that, I feared that you would see me differently when I would tell you what my parents were. Silly, I know. But I didn't want you to know that I'm even more diffrent than already visible. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe the secrets I kept to please you, dragged us apart because you knew that there some things I never told you. Some things I never could tell you, not even now, really and you're dead for everything holy.

Anyways. My baba, my father, was muslim, my mum was hindu. And my mum, she died when I was still very young. So she told me about rebirth.

When you die, you get reborn as an animal or even a human, when you were especially good.

Normally, I'm not the religious type of guy or anything, and if you prefer to stay in heaven, I still love you but sometimes I wonder if you're still here. Or back again, I guess.

Not as a human. Your open distain of our race didn't got unnoticed by me. But rather back as a cat, maybe. One with fluffy red hair, sleeping in the sun, not caring what everything around you is up to.

Wherever you are, I hope you're happy there. Whatever you are. And maybe, we'll see eachother again, sometimes, someday. Who knows.

With all the love you should have received before,

Abad Potter

PS. Just for the record, I'm not suicidal. I don't care if our reunion is on earth or on some distant star, I just hope there will be one. I hope one day I'll just see you again and I'll nod southernly and ask you.

"What's going on?"

And your cat eyes will turn into small slits and I know that you would've rolled your eyes and tell me: "The rats around this place, apparently."

But you can't because you're a cat but I still know what you mean because I know you and I would still understand you if you're a cat.

You know, Abad, with every letter written you're just going to sound insaner and insaner. First old man then cat lover what's this? Some sick and twister version of alice in wonderland? Better hope that nobody ever sees this, this will, without a doubt embarrassing.