To whom it may concern,


I wanted to say I love you because when we do eventually meet, it won’t matter. I thought I knew you, long ago in the relics and rituals of my childhood. Through the sweet wine and stale, flat bread I can still taste in my memories. I thought I knew you because I was told that I did.

And then I knew I couldn’t know you at all. My friends lay splintered and bloody on the other side of a broken guardrail, they wanted to have some fun was all, a few beers and maybe get laid. What they got was shattered skulls and stupid fucking crosses buried where the new guardrail sits now. I knew you had to be something other than the promises of goodness and caring I was told.

Then I went away, got some wisdom and the patience to read the paper, watch the news. I saw the word nigger written on the library wall, read the stories of a million dead soldiers, fighting for freedom, or so they were told, and called babykillers when they came home. I saw the fire hoses on television, knocking down men, women and children like bowling pins because they wanted to drink at the wrong fountain. I still wanted to know you then but I wasn’t sure where to find you.

And then they called my name and I was shot into the wide, wide world. The world they told us you looked after. It wasn’t your world, couldn’t be? Open bellies dripping viscera, friends shooting friends, children shooting and being shot at; a constant symphony of explosion, fire, and death. I didn’t want to know you then, I told you to fuck off and stay away from me. And I meant it.

I came back and they spit on me too; I got through it though. I did, me- by myself and life’s stream took me down through the years. I watched all the madness and forgot about you completely. Assassinations, abominations- innocent men in prison while evil men stay free and rich- and they don’t just shit on each other, they shit on everything! Trees raped! Animals destroyed until they disappear! They spill their crap into the oceans by the ton! I had a friend who said he found you; I asked him what the fuck he was thinking! Look around I said? Do you see him? Do you for one baby-dumping, gang-slaying, corporate-raiding, mother-fucking minute think God exists?

When I got married they wanted you there and I said sure, whatever- as long as the beers cold and the bride shows up- light the candles and bring on the wafers. I laughed at the empty promises of your words and knew it didn’t matter. My wife felt the same, it was for the old family she said, and they still thought you were around.

We had a baby, my wife and I. We named her Chloe and she died when she was 2 weeks old. She came too early and she left us in the morning. And I wanted to kill you. I knew you weren’t there and I still wanted to fucking kill you. It was the strangest thing. I sat there in the dark, drinking and listening to my wife weeping upstairs and I wanted to smash your head against the rocks and hear your skull splinter in my hands.

And then I went numb inside and didn’t know anything. Everything was pale and soundless and I was just walking through it. I couldn’t hear my wife weeping. The rain would fall and I couldn’t feel it, or hear it and the whole world was my chair, in the dark and the face of a dead child. That was a month ago. Even if I saw the bus coming I wouldn’t have cared.

Then you showed up after all this time. I know you now. You aren’t what you where supposed to be, not what I was told you were, but I know you. And I love you. They’re turning the machines off tomorrow; I know because I can hear them talking, they don’t know it but I can.

So before they do I wanted to say I love you. If you can somehow let my wife know I said that, and that I mean it; maybe if you can do that, she’ll be able to know you too.

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