Johannes Göransson
Dear Ra,
I'm drinking the quietest liquid in the world. Six times a day. It makes me feel like I'm walking on the bottom of a swimming pool when everything else throbs like a bruise. We almost burned down my hospital. We almost chased the nurses out of your nursery. If only your sheets hadn't been so cold, your matches so clammy. Your moths fluttered while I fidgeted. You looked at me as if I was bleeding from my forehead.
Those other letters I've written to you - I didn't actually write them. My best friend wrote them. To imitate my style he starved for days and wrote with his fingers. I didn't even write this letter. I found this letter in a waiting room. I think this letter may be a bit paranoid, or at least worried that it's fallen into the wrong hands. Dear little letter, you've fallen into the wrong hands. I'm using you as a bitter letter to my ex-girlfriend, an Egyptian girl named Ra who's got the head of a hawk. Yes, you're right little letter, I screwed that head on her shoulders, I gave her that silly name. Yes, little letter, that's considered rape in several states. Actually, I think this letter may be a ransom note. Give me back myself or I'll hide my body in the trunk of a car I stole because I needed a windshield for my fist and a sudden impact to teach my skin that things break.
Narrative equals death. That's the ad for my favorite French musical about car-crashes. The director wears shades and dances like milk, even though the stage is brittle and the fire's spreading to my neighbors' garage. The musical presents cannibalism as a metaphor for how a person might feel about someone he wants to whip around and fuck up the ass. I never fucked you up the ass, did I? I barely had time to fuck you up the pussy.
You wonder when Radiohead's new CD is coming out, but not why my childhood has thrashed eyes. Why does my childhood look at me like that? Why does your childhood feel like a rumor? Why do I ask so many questions when you so seldom reply? Other people - people I barely know - talk to me every day, telling me stories about my secret heritage. They say I'm related to plagues. They say when my mom gave birth to me her mind was a snare. They confuse my stories about you with the story about the time I fell out of a tree when I was a kid. Their meth lab blew up yesterday. Helicopters circled the pickled branches. They have made up a myth explaining why I talk about you the way I do. They say I'm trying to placate six million people who have crept into the sockets of my homeland. They say something about you I can't quite understand. It has to do with fields that are empty. It has to do with hands. They're cut off, I think.