A letter to Erin Morgenstern
Erin.
Freedom
and I fight about the boy. I do not
believe he reached for the door. She
says he did, that you said he did. I say
you said no such thing, I say that the narrator said he did. I say that the narrator lied. I tell her that the narrator, like the rest
of the people helping that boy forward through his own failure as a person,
also needs to help him, to hide a conceit in their desire for him to
succeed. That “IT” is what makes him a
great villain; that he not only does not know that he is one, but that he also
does not believe it, and how important it is for those around him to also
believe that he is not.
I tell
Freedom there is someone else in the basement.
She says there is not. I tell her
of course there is, that it is also probably not completely honest to call that
place a basement, but I guess it feels like one at times. We argue, a lot. I see the plaster on the walls, she sees gray
stone. We hope we will understand which parts
of our worlds our broken, and which are just air, neither of us wanting to be
right, just to understand.
Freedom
and I go there together, to the starless sea, on our intentions alone. When she reads, she is pulled this way and
that by the most beautiful and most tragic things about you. She closes her eyes and reads, and in three
words is as light as the air. When we
read together I am always stopping her, telling her why the door to his dorm
room might be the most important door in his life, why I knew the door to that one
place had a chain bolt on it before she read that the door had a chain bolt on
it, and how strongly I felt about the evil of a chain bolt on a door, how anti-magic
it is, how some dark thing invented a way to neither open or close a
door.. We argue about how perfect a
villain the boy is. She says that he is
not a villain. And while with my entire
life I have tried to put down the mirror in front of me to see it for the glass
it could be, clear and complete, I still just see myself.
I am
the other man in the cell. I have
watched the pirate for so long, and seen so many come down, afraid or full of
longing but all just mirrors offering the same reflection. I have watched how he does not care and how
she does not care that he does not care.
How long I have spent down there in the hay and the dark, not seen. How a strong voice could have kept me there. How I thought my silence was a good thing, or
perhaps a thing that could increase my worth, how I thought a question asked
was for a question to be answered, and my whole life, how wrong I have been.
We argue
about how the ducks have to be pulled around the pond not moved. How everyone is a villain. How well you shaded them with a pain they
caused you or a hope they left unfulfilled.
We manage a paragraph an hour, maybe, and that is after rereading it, at
least twice, when she will put up with me for that long. There is more, as you know, there always
is. My heart breaks for the door that
opened one last time. I see you all over
the story. You are a great writer like
she is.
We are
about a quarter inch along. She reads
ahead. Of course she does, it’s the
right thing to do, her hand outstretched, pulled this way and that, lovingly,
thoughtfully by your words, made more beautiful in the trust of her reading. Well spent time. And then the two of us sit, and she reads
aloud for the both of us, words she has heard before and enjoys again, words I
hear for the first time. I put down my
brush and I stop her and tell her that’s not true, he did not reach for the door,
that is not who he is, and then we fight back through long pages, as with wild
eyes I try to prove a thing only I can see, to an audience just trying to close
their eyes, trust your words and go where you have asked to take them. We study it.
We weigh words. I try to puzzle
out where the bodies are taken after their ritual prick through the heart. How well do the ones who chose the failure,
wear their own failure? And does a cold
prick await them after the body is laid, undressed, used to decorate a dark
place, and fulfill some new symbol. Is
there a symbol for a mirror, or for a boy who just is not there?
She
has said she could not read a book like that, take it apart and dismantle it as
a writer. I suppose she thinks that is
what writers do. It is what I think she
wants to do with the poems I write to her, quite literally, and that is
fine. Off with the wedding dress, a poke
here or there, then off with the skin, look for the big bones, the major
organs, you know, the heart, the soul, the marrow, as I know in some room
somewhere I sit and cry and hold the dress I made, red now in the blood of
having to explain things I complicated intentionally. “What does that mean?” “What are you trying to say?” “I don’t understand.” this is what she says. “You must kill this.” “We must eat it together.” “There is only
blood.” this is what I hear. I try to
explain that I do not do that in the starless sea. That I look, and touch too much, and stare
too long, and take notes, and haunt the darkness between the words. I recognize my life, my pain, and the pain of
others, of loneliness, a longing for hair to be twirled through bars in a
beautiful basement, or impossibly for a place beyond them that could be unlike
what is behind them. Like watching your
lover read a book instead of your soul, while I sit and twist blood from the
pages.
I
would rise and try the bars, but I am not there, and I don’t scream because the
narrator would ignore it, and my agony would waste a woman’s time and void my
guard’s abdication. And we must not
awaken the guard, for his eyes are closed and he is soaring with the aid of
your wings, and it is not he who keeps me here, in the hay, beside the pirate,
in the dark, nor is it my ignorance that keeps me from reaching for the door.
Justin.
