i keep wanting to write to you, of you this week. make it specific and blatant, because i have looked for you and can't find you anymore, anywhere. just shadows, helpless traces in all the old places.
so here i am, reaching at the dark, because i felt ready to say this, or feel the need to say it. to say something... i don't know what i'm saying, just that in my very gut is some urge to find you.
you don't answer any of the old email addresses anymore. i've messaged them a few times. i'm sorry for being so angry, for not responding those couple times when you reached out last year.
i wish i could know you are well.
i wish you could know that i miss you. i miss the sound of your voice and the way we used to laugh.
so much has changed. i'm sitting here with one good arm, another dead one slung up against my side, and a giant scar from my neck to my elbow. i had cancer, kenneth. fucking
cancer. i might still have it. i have to hang around and get checked up for another two years, hope the nodules they found in my lungs are just random growths that i've always had, instead of metastases.
but you know what? this is it. this is why i feel like i have to talk to you again, to find you and be friends.
i came out of a ten hour surgery, a surgery i went into scared completely shitless and wondering if i'd even wake up, or if i woke up would i only have one arm there? what if... what if...
and the first thing i said when i woke up, according to the nurse at my bedside, was your name. YOUR name.
the nurse was so confused. she kept saying, kip? kip? thinking i wanted to see my dad, but i was insistent. kenneth? who is he? he's not here. kenneth. kenneth. i didn't stop saying it until i realized i was saying it. of course you weren't there. and i knew i was awake, like i wrote in that poem.
i keep dreaming about you. old dreams, new dreams. max dreams. i fought it for a couple weeks, thinking it was the drugs making me overly emotional, or, i don't know what.
i miss you, is what. i've got this huge hole of waiting for my arm to heal, to try and use it again, and the only hole i've ever experienced like it, the only thing i can relate it to in all of this, is the hole of you. the hole of you that's so big, so bottomless, so.. fathomless. oh, the irony. the odds of fate.
i just want to know that you don't hate me, or that you think of me. i track visits to my blog sometimes. sometimes perth pops up in them, once every four or five months. such a tiny blip on a big radar, and i wonder if it's you. i hope it's you. and i wonder what you see, what you come back looking for.
if you ever see this, i want you to please not send back my things. i gave them to you, they're yours now. i want you to keep them. unless you've burned them or thrown them out... i don't know. perhaps you weren't as rash at the end as i was. maybe you left them at your parents' house.
i filled that black november with nothing but regrets. lost so many pieces of you. i still have the ring, i still have bear, and the birthday card. but i'm missing so many of the photos. the conversations.
i do love you. you matter to me. you always will. that doesn't change, can't change. as much as i have tried to make it, to ignore it, it's like trying to cut off a limb. you were a part of me for so long.
email me, if you ever see this. if you read this and feel like you could just assuage the small part of me that aches to know you're ok. email me, for whatever reason keeps pulling you back here. all my little corners of contact have stayed the same. even my phone number.
i just need to know that you're ok. that life is treating you well. that you're happy and healthy and that you know that i'm thinking of you. a lot. i do every day. i don't know if that means anything to you, but you should know it just the same.
just a hello, just an... anything.
love,
chels
