Part of Me

My love and I have been trapped inside of our respective houses like rats in a cage ever since the start of the pandemic. An ocean separates us, but distance is no challenge to our love. Text messaging, email- these things are so impersonal and cold. She and I are old souls both, and prefer the method of the old-fashioned letter. It takes longer, but the heart grows fonder with delayed gratification, to put a new spin on an old, tired phrase. I've certainly found it true in any case.

First my job was moved to remote status, then I was let go. Now all my days blend into one, a long, continuous wait for the next letter in the low light of my living room, the tv purring on. Every day at precisely 2 pm I go to the lobby to check the mail. Her correspondance is like a life raft for me, and from the time I send my letter out to the time I get one in return, scrawled with my name in her beautiful, slanting hand, I am waiting on tenterhooks.

Nothing matters but that thick envelope in the mail, and as soon as I get it, I lock myself in my apartment. I sit at my writing desk and draw trembling fingers over the places her pen pressed the paper with ardent longing, and imagine I am transported to the scene of her writing it, spying on her hunched over a lap desk on her bed at the university, scribbling feverishly. In these visions, I can smell her perfume, that rosewater and ivy scent that drives me mad, and I can almost- just almost- touch the heavy golden locks that tumble over her shoulder, which she occasionally moves to tuck behind her ear. After pressing the envelope to my nose and my lips, I open it with the blade of my pocket knife and pull the sheaves of paper from their prison, let the sound of her voice fall over me as I read.

I grow so lonely here, she said in a past missive. I came here to study but now everything's been delayed. My life on hold, and I can't help but imagine you over there in New York just getting on with things like normal. What I wouldn't give to hold your hand. If I can't soon, I fear what I might do...

My love is of very delicate constitution, very insecure, though if you saw her this would be impossible to understand. In the past, she's been burnt, left by previous lovers who made passionate promises they never delivered on. They said she was too demanding, too unreasonable. But none of those fools deserved her in the first place. They didn't understand her like I do. They didn't have what it took, didn't have the courage to go any length to prove their love.

I know the lockdown must apply to you as surely as it does to me, she'd said in her last letter, but you are surrounded by people there all the same. How can I ever be sure you aren't talking to some other girl, telling her all the things you tell me?

I don't mind her insecurity; on the contrary, it makes me feel needed, consequential in the way nothing has made me feel before. Not my family, or any of the friends I haven't talked to in ages; certainly not my pointless, piddling job that dropped me like a hot potato after I became inconvenient to them. This is what I was born for: to ease her fears, to be her partner.

I reassured her that since the start of this twilight reality, I've had no association with anyone except, involuntarily, my neighbors, the time last month when they showed up at my door, uninvited, faces scrunched in disapproval.

We heard something, they said. We're concerned.

I glared at their scrunched brows, their masked faces, through the peephole.

There's nothing to be concerned over, I told them in my most magnanimous voice. I hate when people pry. After that, I covered my walls in that sound-insulating foam I ordered off of Amazon. I haven't heard from them since.

.

When I check the box today and find her latest missive has been delivered, it is all I can do to not shout in joy. I run up to my apartment and shut and bolt the door once more, kicking off my slippers, and struggle one-handed to open the envelope that contains my sustenance for the next several days. Along with a sheaf of paper covered in her lovely, sloping cursive, a hank of soft blonde hair tied in a red ribbon falls out on my kitchen table. I run my shaking hand over it, gasping in sheer pleasure from the sensation, and turn my eyes greedily to her words.

My Love,

Thank you so much for your last letter, and most of all, your gift. I was half-sure you'd leave me when you read my fears and my request. I hope you are doing well, and that you have enough saved not to have to worry about a stupid job. This world asks so much of us, and gives nothing in return.

I was a fool to come here and study. I can feel my mental health declining by the day. I see men occasionally, but they do nothing for me. I know it is different for you as a man. That sometimes the gift of sight, of fixing those beautiful eyes of yours upon another might awaken thoughts in you of moving on. And who could blame you? If only I might stare into them now, in person, and know they are for me and me alone…

.

Moments later, I stand in front of the bathroom mirror. My letter has been written and is sealed up, ready to go. All that's left is my heartfelt gift.

I've gagged myself with an old shirt, more so I have something to bite down on than because I'm afraid of making noise- my last gift took care of that. How can I ever be sure you aren't talking to some other girl? Because, my love, I have nothing to speak with! I've sent my tongue to her for her keeping, along with my first gift. It's because of the first gift that I choose my right side now- it is easier to reach, being closest to my right hand. The stump of my left twitches, still tender with a phantom need to assist in the operations. It cannot, of course; it has gone on to a greater purpose (no longer will she need to long to hold my hand- she has assured me of the comfort it gives her in the long nights!)

I've already selected a box- the small kind that houses a wedding ring, relieved of its cushioning. Now I raise the scalpel to my right eye, my hand as steady as my heart in its devotion to her Would that I could send her my heart! Perhaps if this sickness never reaches an end, perhaps if the world comes to a close, I will, one final act for my dearest.

But it has not yet come to that. My hope remains strong. As I end all my letters, Have faith, love, that we will meet again. Until then, know that you will always have part of me.

I look into my own eye, watching it quake like a cornered animal as I move in, as I make the first cut.