In her columns, Nathalie Plaat calls on your stories. In February, she invited you to tell her about your loves and your breakups. The “News from you” section provides excerpts from your responses.
My wolf, I never believed in destiny, even less in a soul mate, until I encountered the glow of your eyes in the darkness of an August night, in this constantly unmade bed which was mine that year. In the morning, I went to dry your dress at the local laundry room. Your dress full of all the rain from the night before, this dress that will always be my favorite of all the dresses in the world.
When I got up, I played this record that had absorbed my pain over the last few months, the Timber Timbre song that opened it had made a hole in my heart, it said: “ Oh Lord I must have heard you knock me out of bed / As the flames licked my head » and these words which had taken on a univocal meaning in my pain had changed meaning, these flames had become bursts of love against the death of my dreams which had fallen to the bottom of the bed with all the blankets in their fall, I had finally awakened from a long nightmare, as long as the month of February can be when you watch all the drafts entering your home through the crack in the door, helpless, wild, sad.
You took the song in your mouth and spat it out like a pistachio shell on the sidewalk, good-naturedly, while your dress dried and you bit into a slice of melon.
Who knows if we will not one day relive this night which has extended to us since then, that the Earth will not change sides to give a swing to the waltz of our eyes which get lost in each other’s setting like a shell in the sea. Even if the arguments bother us with their share of worries, the absences seem less long, the kisses become more spaced , I know that we will be afraid enough of everyday life to return to the arms of this night where we were like the cry of mad birds. Like this swallow’s nest lost in the wasteland of a house yet to be made, we will find the trace of the path with our wings, twig by twig, to make and unmake the bed without ever getting lost.
And so that this night remains forever the anchor that we raise each time I enter you, each time I love you, there must be two of us to pull it from the depths of the waters, we must we inhabited the same impossible-to-exhaust sea. Like the dizziness I already had when looking at the sky, I must love you knowing that I will never be able to overcome the stars. You give me this dizziness that I will never write, this dizziness that words cannot convey. Every time I don’t write to you, reread this letter. I love you so much that I won’t write you another one. I will stick to it like the tide that rises and breaks its bursts on the glass roof accumulated by the winds, at the Trois-Pistoles chalet where my memories drag on the shore like so many pieces of glass softened by the waves.
I don’t know if you’re sleeping, you who have had such difficulty getting to sleep for some time now. I try to blow on your dreams with my rum breath, I wake you up, don’t I? Don’t wake up. The door is open, the cat is no longer scratching and the lights are off. The purr of the fan from the stove stopped sucking in my last fumes. The bottle of rum is empty. Tomorrow, I get up at dawn to give my lessons to young people who are no longer sure of anything. She doubts herself as much or more than my stories of great books written by dead people. She is right to doubt, before her wildest disappointments are confirmed.
And even if they all jump up and leave my class, even if schools close their doors due to carelessness, I am not afraid of the future. Your skin-soft heart beats on the surface of my fears, I can walk peacefully in a desert of reality if you continue to make the rain fall on the hidden words of our love story. The chapter is open, no one can predict the end. But we know that the book is a half-open door to a warm bath in a snowy winter.
I am writing to you to tell you that I am watching next to your body for the slightest rays of moonlight that could wake it up. I’m writing to you so that you never worry about not sleeping again. I am writing to you so that you can dream of the life that awaits us. I am writing to you to find out if you want me for eternity, if you want me to grow old loving you a little more each day. I’m afraid that you forget that in my life, you are the most disturbing certainty, and that you allow me to see beyond the evening supper, than the next morning, than the next time we make love . I’m writing to tell you that you make me a better person, and that all the words in the world mean nothing if they don’t tell this simple truth.
I’m writing to tell you that I love you.