Letter to Myself

Trust me, trust us, you say every time, sugar sweet and sleepy. Everything will be fine—have you ever known me to lie to you? Have you ever known me to spread untruth? You say, I have never led you astray. And then you smile, showing your teeth, and you laugh, showing your tongue, and your words curl up around my neck like a centipede scarf, some warm, limp, many-legged thing, and I think, every time, oh very well, and it marks the beginning of my surrender. 

I have come to see you as a curse of sorts. Did you know? Despite the human face and the hands in mine, you reside in my mind as a wicked thing. 

‘Oh, I had no idea,’ you hum. ‘So what makes you say that?’

‘What?’ I say. ‘What?’ I wring my fingers and drag my nails down the length of my palms. 

Curious, you tilt your head. You are always very curious. Relentlessly so. The other day you came to me as I sat at my laptop and checked my emails, leaning over my shoulder and pressing your cold skull against my temple. I thought about asking you to leave me be, but you settled yourself beside me and peered at the screen.

‘You’ve been doing this for a while. Aren’t you tired? Hungry?’

‘I’ve only started,’ I replied. ‘And it isn’t lunch yet.’

‘But aren’t you hungry? I am. And I’m very bored. Come and keep me company.’

So you tugged me up and dragged me to the dusty kitchen. The dining table is tall and rectangular. If someone were to put a cloth over it, I think it would look like an altar. 

Going to the fridge, I kneeled and rifled through the shelves and drawers, all of them partially-filled. ‘What do you want to eat?’ I asked. There were a pack of nectarines wrapped up in plastic and cardboard and they were rotting, somewhat, paling and wrinkling and shrouding themselves in faint mold. 

‘We have some fruit,’ I said. ‘But none of it is good.’ 

‘No fruit,’ you said from the floor where you sprawled. And so I set the nectarines aside, and the round, golden pears, and the grapes, because those had gone grey. I heaved myself up and looked at the shelf above. Everything there was frozen, or at least very cold. A bottle of water gone limpid. 

There was a jar of tartar sauce that knocked against my knuckles as I nudged different objects out of the way. A container of baby cucumbers, a small wheel of camembert, a vacuum-sealed packet of smoked trout. I moved the jar to the top shelf. The thick grey matter on the outside of it stained my fingers.

‘We have some leftovers,’ I said. The night before this one we ate fried rice and left it unfinished because you brought dessert out far earlier than we really should have, and I had to pull cling-wrap over the top of the bowl and store it for later. ‘Do you want the leftovers? We should finish it soon, or it’ll go bad.’ 

‘I’m afraid I’m not quite hungry,’ you said. So I put the food back in the fridge. 

You do this often. You’re horribly fickle. Each word released from your mouth is an inconstant thing. You might usher me to bed one moment and rattle me awake the next because you are bored and lonely in your own head. 

‘But a curse?’ you say with many teeth. ‘I don’t think I deserve this slander. You had to rearrange the fridge anyway. Now come. Why don’t we go on a walk? I think you’ll feel much calmer after. Trust me.’ 

It’s been raining very hard recently: strong winds and bulging droplets of water, swollen and cold. The puddles soak through the worn soles of my shoes and every step is a squelch of discomfort. Outside is a mess of tumbling greys and blues, the trees are wet and tired, the sky is dripping down into the gutters,  I have an assignment that I have yet to complete—some electronic poster due in three days. 

You ask me about it, stepping idly around the dead worms all over the pavement. 

‘I thought we were going on a walk,’ I frown. ‘Why are you asking me about it?’ 

‘Well, why don’t you multitask? You can think up your ideas out here in the rain, and once you come home, you’ll be able to type it out. Clever, clever, isn’t it?’

‘I’ve tried that before,’ I sigh. ‘I can’t concentrate.’  

You flick your gaze at me and laugh. ‘‘This time will be different! Trust me. Have you ever known me to lie?’

We walk out in the storm for longer than you said we would earlier. Much longer than those few minutes, more than an hour, perhaps two. 

Hm? You say as we pass beneath a bridge. There are centipedes grooming themselves on the rocks, moving their mouths over their many, many legs. You nudge them with your foot and they all go skittering away, abandoning their tasks. You hum, it’s okay, let’s stay out a little longer. It’ll be fine. You’re still thinking, aren’t you? It’ll work out.

We come home and the sky has poured itself into the storm drains, leaving only a thick, dark clog behind. The moon and the stars all look like faint, whitish smudges in the night smog and the front gate is covered in water, creaks loudly as it opens. 

I don’t really do my assignment that day. It’s mostly alright. I have a little more time, and it should all work out. Instead, I sit at the dining table and peel the grapes. First I wash them, rub off the sticky wet with water to make it smooth and clean, and then the skin comes off, shiny, fragrant, and then the layer of it that has gone squishy and overly sweet until only the center is left, the seeds bitter and crunching between my teeth. 

‘You’re going to stay there?’ you ask me, leaning over my shoulder, your perch.

‘I’m too tired to feel like moving,’ I say absently, ‘including my brain.’

‘You have a terrible procrastination habit,’ you tell me. 

I hum to myself, digging my nails under the skin of a new grape. ‘You don’t say.’

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(Note to me: Please do your assignments. Stop going to the fridge to stare at the food. Just do it. Please.)