A Letter

[Carlos, a shepherd from the city of Colatina, eastern Brazil, once wrote a letter to Brida, the love of his life. It was not meant to be sent to her, let alone go public. However, I have somehow found it out and am more than willing to put it out there for you.

The love story of Carlos and Brida is known to very few. People have always been curious, and this letter provides at least something to feed the curiosity.]

Dear Brida,  

I am good, and I hope you are the same. 

I had been desperate to hear from you. Having gone through your letter, I came to know that you wanted me to believe that you acknowledged your wrongs and thereby, wished to redeem. I also made out that you wanted me to believe you think it is the biggest mistake you have ever committed. And well, after all the years I have spent (or wasted) with you, I am sorry to say I am not in a position to trust even a word of yours. 

As a trait I have adopted from your company, I do not find myself strong enough to face the reality. I like to think I am not the only pilgrim who lost his way and got driven towards love, and that I am not the only one who did not realize that it could not ever be love if it “drove” souls towards itself. It hurts more than anything to know I am still too far away from the destination I had set out for and that I could have accomplished a good many things if I had avoided those times of pain that love brought me. Love brought me hurt—yes, that is its truth!

I cannot bear it all. Please take me back to the day I had met you. I would want to re-live those times when I knew very little of you, when we talked only as friends (though today, even that is unwanted) and not as two morbid lovers in the middle of nowhere, and when it meant nothing after we parted. If it happens again—the days of excitement and the nights of thirst—I am going to make a different move this time. I am going to give it all a deep thought, asking myself if it should be worth the while. And then, I would wait for my heart to say, ‘Do not get closer. It is not pretty. Don’t you dare go along!’

From having all of me to all of you, this is what every cell in my body regrets it did not say to me then. So if it happens all over again, nothing is going to miss a chance to warn me against you. 

Please carry me back to those days. I would really appreciate it. I don’t tell anyone I am still haunted by the ghost of you, and it wakes me up in the middle of the night. And I manage to sleep only when the world starts to awake. I have no idea where to start… or where to end?

It still flashes clearly before my mind’s eye— those days when I craved your skin against mine, not knowing it could burn me to ashes, those evenings when I waited to hear from you, so desperately that I forgot to eat, sleep and even think, and those nights when my heart was filled with nothing but terror, and your eyes with nothing but tears. 

Oh, take me back to those times… those times when I had all of me and you had none of you, when we were who we were supposed to be and when you were still devising your tactics and I was looking at your face that looked so pretty when lost in brooding. Little did I know what you were up to.

But now that I am well aware what you were thinking about, I wish nothing but go back to those times, so I can fix my own self instead of you and walk away realizing people like you would never know how to love.

Oh, and I wonder why you are still quiet when people want to know the last story. Just like you ever broadcast my wrongdoings to the whole damned world, why did you not do the same with the last scene you created in our story? So, the day you confess what a witch you are, I will believe you are really strong. Otherwise it is not far from truth that you only leech on innocent people to escape your pain. That, I am sorry, is nothing but sheer cowardliness. 

I know, for you, promises are meant only to be broken; they are nothing more than words on paper or in the air. So I can never believe a word you said. But I promise to, only if you take me back to those days when I was a happy-go-lucky kid and you, a shrewd woman; so, being well aware of your plans now, I could just go fail them and thus, save myself.

I hope rest is alright, between you and whoever new you have caught to fill your void. 

My best wishes are always with you.

With blurred, tainted love, and a blend of deepest hatred, criticism, regret and avoidance,
Carlos