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David Miller

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Spiritual Letters (Series 4, #2)

She sent me a drawing of a rose, inscribed with my birth date. Sitting in a bar, thinking that you might walk in – without any reason for thinking so. Everything else in the painting – from the landscape to the person’s body – was considered background for the depiction of the face. He told me that his favourite book was The Incoherence of the Incoherence; I didn’t believe him. A rose petal inside the folded sheet. You suggested that  I  lie  back  on  the  floor,  and  when  I  did,  you  leapt  on  top  of  me  from  the couch. – What did you expect, letting yourself look so vulnerable? She recalled the smell of brandy (and the small bottle the woman kept in her handbag), the constant smoking of cigarettes. – I’m heartbroken, you said in the message you left me; my cat has disappeared. Later you found the cat, shut inside one of your trunks. The woman sat on the ledge, dangling her legs and looking pensively after the removal van. Dear, you wrote, how warm and consoled I feel, embraced by your concern, this crucial day of my life. They came back into the room and found her lying on the wrapped and crated painting.


 

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