Belgrade, July 1897
Little Fox,
Whenever I leave one of these for you, I wonder: Will it reach you? How many of my letters gather dust, sitting forever unclaimed on some hapless young officer’s desk? Words I whisper into a void, never to reach your soul.
Either I’m getting faster or you’re getting slower.
I’m trying not to blame you. It makes me so angry that I have to wait on weak, arrogant men to realize they need to send for your help.
I hoped to see you in Barcelona, hoped you would pause in front of the astonishing basilica being built there so I could watch you looking at it, hoped you would walk along the beach and let the ocean caress your ankles so I could step in the same water after and imagine doing the same to you, but you never came at all.
So often it’s time for me to move on before the men in charge send for you. So often they never even know that they need you.
I tried hard not to need you, Little Fox, but I’m afraid I might.
I used to do this without you. How quickly I’ve come to depend on knowing you’ll see it, too.
Imagining how these scenes of pain and gore and destruction will appear to your eyes makes everything better.
Today, I stood on a bridge in Belgrade, watching the Danube slip away beneath me.
I thought of the ocean in Barcelona that never tasted you, and I wondered if you’ve touched this river.
If some particle of you was passing me by and I don’t know.
I grew jealous and wanted to stand at the river’s edge, open my mouth impossibly wide, and swallow it all to make certain the greedy ocean couldn’t claim you before I do.
There’s too much to be done to waste time fighting with rivers. Yet I lingered on the bridge, watching the water, contemplating time. How much I’ve lost. How much I’ve given up. How much I’ve taken.
Time feels more real when I’m waiting for you.
I sometimes have that same greedy impulse when it comes to your friends, though.
I want to devour them. To consume them, so that everyone you love is me.
So that everyone you see, everyone who sees you, is me.
I hate that I have to share your attention with so many others.
It’s selfish, I know. I’m allowed to be selfish, I think.
And isn’t it mutual? Haven’t you built your life around trying to get closer to me?
I do hope you get to see a little of Belgrade before it’s forever tainted by what’s awaiting you in the artist’s studio.
A truly astonishing use of materials. All that creation, turned to destruction.
Will you ever look at a paint palette the same, or will you always see this masterpiece of gore?
How many colors the human body can produce as it’s slowly, carefully disassembled?
Get better at your job, Little Fox. Don’t depend on weak-minded, exhausted men to call on you for help. Beat them to it. We are wasting too much time, and yours is so finite I could weep.
If I could weep, that is.
Kind Regards,
Diavola