Love Letter to a Friend by Neha Bhattacharya

 Hi boo, 

Sorry, this took so long. I read your email the moment I received it and have been reading it at least once every day ever since. I am afraid I might have memorised most of it already, for I read it again and again and again to feel your soft, balmy warmth exude from it each time. I menat to write to you a long time ago, but these days I find myself so burned out by the end of the day that the words simply keep floating in the air and I have the hardest time stringing them into sentences. 

Thank you for writing me a love letter and thank you for making it about you. Thank you for emailing me this and not mailing it like how the quarantine-fatigued enthu-cutlets have started to these days (Is this a new social media trend that I didn’t catch up to, yet?). I like this better. I don't think I can deal with emotions when they come sealed in a tangible thing; now more than ever. I like this better. Between yearning for stupid ol’ letters and romanticising the heck out of them, we all forget how absolutely like an undemanding lover the e-mails are. They come with no baggage, and they don't expect you to romance them to death. 

Anyway, I read your email. You are empty, you said. You quit your job, you said. What a coincidence—  I am empty too! So empty that if I scream into the deep, wide hole in my chest, I'd hear only the deafening silence bounce back. But you know what? Bang empty cans together and music is born. So you, my empty can, hold on to me tight, for we empty cans will make sure we make the world's most off-tune but trippiest music together. Empty cans stay afloat in the rowdiest of sea-storms. Thank god that we are empty.

So quit as many jobs as you like, love anybody and everybody to bits to bits to bits and be the unhinged beauty that glares down on the minuscule world from her attic. Normalcy sanitises reality. You in your little room with the tiny window, have learned to love the unsanitariness of life. How can there be, then, anything more beautiful than that? Oh, that reminds me- did you get the chance to confess your love to her, yet? I am happy that you, the dearest soul of all, are blessed with all seven shades of love, no less. Not everyone believes in the magic pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for they never get to see one. It's not your job to make them believe in it. So what does it matter if people think your rainbow isn’t credible enough. You hold onto your gold tight and make sure your rainbow shines brighter than ever. 

I do not know if I can write too much about myself in this email. In the past year, between scrambling for air and looking for that elusive contentment, I found some new pieces of myself but lost the ones I already had. I do not know this new insecure, hypochondriac me. I think I have a fever and low-grade asthma today. I don't know if I am over-thinking this illness into reality or if I am indeed sick. In any case, I don't feel too good today. These days I am also looking for a part-time job, but I am utterly unemployable so why would anybody ever want me in their organisation? Honestly, I know for a fact that I don't give two hoots about employability anymore. I can't write, clearly. Lately, I am having a hard time even finding two words to rub together. Last night, I wrote a poem on a page and then shredded it to pieces. It felt fantastic; I won’t lie. It was symbolic almost. Shredding the page and watching the bits litter the floor: detached, disinterested, free. It felt cathartic. I believed you when you said that scholarly pursuits feel like sitting around and stitching the world out of grass.  Except my grass has dried out to golden hay—  It can only produce cud now. 

Anyway, I will, of course, stay afloat and try to be as human as I can. Do you know my hair curls up like Christmas ribbons now? (courtesy: the damp weather in Vancouver) I took a pair of scissors and chopped off my bangs the other day. It made me feel good. Relieved, almost. It’s as if the scissors managed to puncture my heart and make some of the numbness ooze out like pus. Writing to you makes me feel better too. The kind of better that you feel after a good vomit. The kind of better that reassures me that I’ll survive. 

I am gonna end this email here. Write to me more. Or don't. Just remember I will always be thinking of you. 

Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love. 

N.