A Tribute to the Shelter of My Memories: Letter Nº8

I’m still not sure if I should write this. I hope it’s not in a way offensive.
The occasion called and I just got reminded of how if I don’t write this letter maybe I would never write it and just maybe I’d regret not telling you what you meant to me especially now that you’re being left alone for what it seems to be forever so I might as well do it; even if it’s stupid, childish and clingy.

I remember when I first stepped in, I remember the sets of stairs and I remember the weight of my stuff in my hand and I remember how talkative the taxi driver was while I was coming. At that moment I didn’t think twice about if what I’m doing is safe or if it’s too much since it was 9 in the morning on a Friday in a part of the city that I didn’t know that well. almost towards what seemed to be a dead-end, you were there. I will go back to that day again; not for the reasons I had then but for the reasons, I have now.

I do think I owe some of my beautiful memories to you. You made me feel like I was home even when I clearly couldn’t stay and I didn’t. I guess it was you and the people around us; I owe it to them too. I know I’ve already said goodbye to you but now I know better. as much as you might think a goodbye would give you a closure; it doesn’t.

I don’t know how others feel about you and I might just be out of my field here but truth be told I hope after this I would stop thinking about you. about how I fell on you out of laughter, how I laid naked on you, how I used to drop everything to come to you, early morning taxis, and how I felt about you in the mornings.

4 years ago I went to a play with people I no longer talk to. It was about music. How everything will eventually vanish, disappear, and transform but the sound remains. our voices have already crept inside every crack in your walls and our laughter has been memorized by the stains on your ceiling.

I don’t always like it when people associate me with my mother but I guess there are things you can’t fight. Whenever we are in Ramsar, she insists to go to the place where there used to be a villa. The villa is not there anymore and no one lives around there that she would know yet she comes back and stares at the walls that have been renovated and the modern building that has replaced her memories. Maybe one day if I was around there, I would come back and just look at you; if you were still there of course. Who knows maybe I would even miss you enough to look at your new face.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks about you as I do, as melodramatic as this is. For what it’s worth I know some people would miss you even more than I will. I left you a scar, a house, and a person inside drawn with spray paint. I wrote poems on your windows and I waited for the sun to turn them into shadows on your floor. I looked out of the same windows and hoped that you would never have to be left.

goodbye.

sincerely,

-Ghazal.