day 202

though strange, where the edges are rough and the ashen brown surfaces suggest age and neglect, I feel a strange connection to these found letters.

One letter wrote:

"Patience is not a virtue, but a terrible lie to make us wait for our deaths."

Another wrote:

"I have no friends. I am as lonely as these letters that no one would read."


In a sense, these are not letters. They have no addressees. There are no addresses and every letter begins with just:

"To whom it may concern,"


To whom it may concern! Now it seems, they concern me. I feel the pull from a subterranean realm, grasping for my attention with such diabolical breath. Slip - Slip - Slip
Each turn of the page, he breathes. How do I know it must be a male who penned these words?
I only wish it so.

"To whom it may concern,

Though strange, I have often found words flowing down like a peaceful stream when I write to no one. I prefer this solitude, a tranquil sense of not being known. I hide behind my words, build my defences, and henceforth I could disappear beneath them. Mysteries of myself I no longer have to be responsible to. Contend to cheat myself that I never lived the life I lived. I think to myself, 'how awful it must have been to be me!' and the passing anguish that comes with my waking goes away, for a while. When I write, I cease to exist, even if I must exist to write. That is my paradox that I have to live with. Just as we have to contend with the lack of an audience to follow through my entire life."

It is a pity I never got to know who the writer was. But his words have always given me the inspiration to pen my own. Each lonely word; each dense and loaded word with the mood of that evening. That evening, how long ago it feels now! I do not know when I shall end this endeavour. But his words also fade away as his letters begin to represent a man going mad:

"How slow the day is! How breathing becomes a chore and hunger a disadvantage. I must tarry on, and leave no trace of immortality even if I should sit in this chair and write, 'I live on'."

He is a very brutal man. He predicts his death and cheekily demands my patronage. I must stay with him for a little longer. I miss myself dearly. I miss having my own words. And now I must write like him. It is all strange, really. But I slowly feel my fingers moving, replicating hands that I never once saw.

"though strange, where the edges are rough and the ashen brown surfaces suggest age and neglect, I feel a strange connection to these found letters."

the letters remained hidden away from its intended reader. As elusive as their writer.