In
his hand now, the two spent cases clicked one against the other as he
manipulated them over each other and over like a rosary told to its ascension
with an empty and weightless profundity, reading aloud:
Skunk:
“Dear Mum, I hope this letter finds you well, or at least more stable than you
have been this past fortnight. It’s snowing again. Have you been watching the
snow? I’m going to see the doctor tomorrow myself. I’ve had trouble sleeping
these past few nights, mad itchings across midnight, and I have to keep getting
up to go to the toilet as well. I go before getting into bed, only to find a
few moments later that I need to go again. I usually try to sleep it off,
hoping fatigue will scare off what I presume to be a psychological and not real
necessity of urinating with no luck, and I’ve been waking ache1 with
this insomnia too. Last night she spoke in her sleep, and I talked with her a
little while before she woke up, but I can’t remember what it was all about.
I’m really hoping I sleep tonight.”
The
unfinished unsigned letter folded back upon itself, returning to its habitual
state in defiance of those senescent fingers as held it open. Brother Skunk
slipped it flat into the ageless envelope’s creamy paper perhaps only a little
warped with passing damp and sometime sweat even though the underside of the
flap betrayed its age, brown and widecracked glue never moistened by his
tongue, the envelope unstuck, secreted and never sent, never read by its
addressee who had at its writing left reading far behind.
