You know, sometimes there’s a peculiar joy in making mistakes. Has that ever happened to you? It’s happening to me. Ever since you entered my life, from the day you became my happiness—my laughter, my song, my sole reason for living, my reason for wanting to die—I’ve chosen the path of endless error, and I live as a traveler on that road. You must be so angry with me, so annoyed, aren’t you? To you I’m perhaps nothing more than habit, but to me you are life itself! I simply cannot live like you—detached, solitary, indifferent! When I find your number busy late at night, terrible thoughts flood my mind, I curse silently, I suspect you, I keep calling obsessively. What should I do, tell me? When your number is busy, the blood rushes to my head. In those moments I lose all sense of right and wrong. I cannot share you with anyone else. Do you know how I spend my days convincing myself that when my call doesn’t go through, I won’t say harsh things to you anymore—that you couldn’t possibly be doing anything wrong, you’re a busy person, maybe you’re talking to someone about work, even if it’s 2 AM, anyone could call you for something urgent, that what I’m thinking about you is sinful, you’re good and I’m bad—all these thoughts and more! But the moment I find you busy, I forget all my resolutions, all reason, all understanding, and become savage. I keep making this mistake. There’s such joy in making this mistake. My sorrow grows around you, and with it grows suspicion and rage. I want all the terrible thoughts that crowd my mind when I can’t reach you to be proven false. I pray that God gives me greater capacity to love you. It hurts terribly to misunderstand you. It hurts to hurt you. When I treat you badly, I feel small in my own eyes. You cannot imagine how high a place you hold in my heart. I want all my suspicions about you to be proven wrong—I want this, truly want this from the depths of my heart. I want you to be happy just with me. I don’t want to fight with you. Yet somehow I cannot control myself. My mind just thinks, keeps thinking—what if you’re talking to some girl, what happens to me then? What if in a moment of weakness you show her the same affection you show me! What if she wants to draw you close the way I do! Your girlfriends are all witches, every one of them! The sound of your kisses rings in my ears every moment. Kissing me might be nothing more than necessity for you, but for me it’s life itself! I have so much tenderness for you, so much love, so very much! When I think you’re getting close to another girl, that someone is snatching you away from me, that you’re moving away—whenever I find your phone busy, such thoughts invade my mind. Tell me, my love, what should I do? I want this thought of mine to be wrong. I’m waiting to lose to myself. Maybe you’re a terrible mistake in my life. But believe me, there’s such joy in living within such a mistake! Please don’t misunderstand me. I love you so very much. It’s because I love you that I act like such a fool. The love of mother, father, siblings, friends—no one’s love can compare to theirs. And yet life craves the love of someone special. Life needs someone particular. Whether we admit it or not, we want someone to live constantly in our feelings. Just like this—even without loving me in the slightest, you feel my necessity in certain moments. And I, loving you, feel your presence in every single moment. This is where my victory lies. It seems to me that the triumph of my love is greater than my life itself. You probably think that without spending even a drop of your precious love on me, you’re getting exactly what you want quite nicely. Still, I’ll say it—my victory is right here! Everyone gets what they need, finds happiness in whatever measure they can! Life shows each person only as much as it reveals, and that’s all they live by, isn’t it? Where your living ends, that’s where mine begins. Don’t be angry at my words. Ever since I’ve loved you, I’ve been talking such nonsense.
You know, you are such a person to me that your affection, your words, your neglect, your scolding, your little care—I love it all. I see your face in my mind’s mirror and without knowing it, the corners of my lips break into a smile! And then sometimes, without knowing it, I start to cry. I wonder, why so much tenderness? What is this happiness for? Why do I feel such deep love for you? Why does so much love for you chase me around? Where were you all these years? Why didn’t you come sooner? Why wasn’t I fulfilled by your love much earlier? Why can’t I have you by my side always? Why didn’t I remain intoxicated by your affection for all these years? For so long in my life, such emptiness has consumed me! Why didn’t you come earlier and complete me? You will never know how tender your affection is, how beautiful your heart is, how deep your love goes! How beautifully you know how to love! Tell me, do all your lovers get drenched in such love? Why should anyone else but me come into your life? Why aren’t you mine alone? Don’t you understand that I am yours alone? How easily this little life could be spent in your love! All my life’s waiting has been for your love. I live only to love you. All the love accumulated in my heart was meant for someone like this— someone who knows how to love. Someone who will enchant me with love, someone I will belong to completely. I never wanted my beloved to leave me and belong to someone else. I have always wanted them to come running to me, drunk on my love, leaving the whole world behind. When I finally have them as my own, I will keep them with great care, bind them with affection. They will understand nothing beyond me. I believe in the power of my love. I will be able to keep them in my heart for a lifetime. They will never go anywhere else again. They will remain mine alone forever. The one for whom my world is built with love, for whom all my affection exists, around whom all my thoughts revolve—the desire to have them will surely make me selfish. What wrong is there in this? For love, I can be selfish, reckless, absurd. I don’t accept any logic, I know no obstacles, I hear no judgment. I simply love love love!
You know, if you hadn’t come into my life, I never would have known what true love feels like. What it’s like to be lost in someone’s love, day after day. Your love has made me homeless, wandering, possessed. You taught me the color of love! Then why do you stand so far away, leaving me so faded? Will you love me just a little? Not much, just a little! I’m pleading with you—love me just a little. With just a touch of your love, I could embrace death itself with a smile, I could bid farewell to entire lifetimes with a dismissive glance. When I think of your love, something stirs inside my chest! Tears break through like a dam bursting. Thinking and thinking until tears gather in my eyes. I don’t want to let those tears fall. I feel as though your love has pooled in my eyes. Let it stay there. I feel such tenderness for you, tenderness that keeps growing. Eventually I can no longer hold the tears at the corners of my eyes. They spill over with a soft splash. That feeling is strangely beautiful! These weary eyes couldn’t bear love, but at least there’s this consolation—I held it for a while. And isn’t that something? How many people are blessed with even that much, tell me? Sometimes I dream you’re leaving me behind to go abroad. I follow you, but you don’t even turn to look at me. Sometimes you stop for a moment to scold me harshly, refusing to let me come with you. I don’t know why I have such dreams. I cry in my sleep. I had this dream again yesterday. And the day before, I dreamed you were terribly angry with me. Wearing a dark blue suit, you were disappearing somewhere far away. I gazed at you with desperate, strange eyes. It hurt so much—the pain of not being able to bring you back. That infinite pain, you’ll never understand. Love brings such suffering, my dear! Tell me now, why so much affection? Why does such tenderness keep me restless all the time? I want to shower you with so much love, darling. So very, very much! When we meet next, I’ll love you endlessly, won’t I? Endless, endless affection. I’ll love you like a madwoman. Unsatisfied heart, unsatisfied thirst, unsatisfied gaze. You are my unsatisfied addiction.
I’m afraid. Has this letter even reached you? Perhaps you won’t want to take this one either, will send it back. Go ahead, send it back. As long as I have the strength to write, I will keep writing to you. No matter which corner of the earth you inhabit, I will write to you, thinking of you! Let no one bother to keep track of my epitaph! My God will know that within those black letters lies the anguish of a sorrowful lover. Across the entire world, handfuls of memories of my love will remain scattered. My love, my suffering will never die. Century after century, all my pain will silently, soundlessly remain awake upon the earth’s breast. Today you may not accept my love, but one day you’ll search for me like a madwoman. That day you won’t find me anymore. Either I’ll have gone insane, or I’ll have left this world entirely. Will you remember me that day and tears come to your eyes? Will you cry even a little? Will you sigh deeply and say, “The poor girl died from loving me!” I will come as a bird to be your companion in lazy afternoons, bloom as wildflowers on your walking path, fall as rain upon your beautiful eyelids, play as sunshine on your rosy lips. Will you recognize me then? Or will you chase me away? Won’t your brow furrow in irritation? Time will record these letters of mine. You know, don’t you, that letters are the most faithful mirror of the heart. Letters are such tender, sensitive things. How much affection, how much tenderness, how much love clings to a letter’s body! And if it happens to be a love letter! Ah! This letter of mine hasn’t fallen into the wrong hands, has it? Better I should die than have it fall into someone else’s hands. A love letter is an invitation to vulnerability and the silent, agreed surrender of dispassionate reasoning. You cannot even imagine how terrible the agony is when a letter doesn’t reach its intended recipient or when that love letter comes back. Yet you have given me exactly that agony. So many times! When my fifty-ninth letter to you came back to my hands, my feeling was as if someone was running a knife through my heart, leaving it wounded and torn. Taking that letter in my hands, it seemed to me that what I held was not a letter, but my own fresh heart writhing in my palm. Tell me, do you know what it feels like to hold your own heart in your hands and stare at it with steady eyes? I know you don’t know. Perhaps you never will! What it feels like to love—that will never be known to you! Darling, do you never feel like loving someone? How can you live so dispassionately? I feel pity for you! How are you? Very, very well, surely. I am not well. For so long now I can’t even remember what it feels like to be well! I so want to be well, darling! I want to cast off this torment. I don’t want to be happy, I want to live free from suffering. Will you give me a small life? I want to live. I want to live with you. You don’t have to give me anything, don’t even give me love, just keep me near, don’t push me away. Have a little mercy on me. I can’t take it anymore, darling!
With every letter of this note, as many drops of tears have fallen from my eyes, just as many drops of fear are gathering in my heart—what if you don’t take this letter either! What if this one too comes back to me! Perhaps I am untouchable to you, but must you be so cruel to my letters as well! Tell me, are you even reading this? Or are you tearing it up without reading, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it into that basket on the right side of your chair? Have you just thrown this letter aside? Will you read it later? Will you remember to read it? Or will you simply forget to even turn it over once to see what’s inside! Tell me, are you reading this? This won’t come back to me, will it? You won’t really send it back, will you? Can’t you spare me a little of your precious time?
You know, it hurts so much! So very much! The agony of having love letters returned is terrible! I don’t want to go through this torment anymore! Even gods don’t return offerings from the heart, my beloved! Please don’t give me this pain again. At least receive it from the courier office. After that, you can throw it away if you want. I’ll know that you took my letter. I’ll close my eyes and imagine that you’ll surely read my letter. If I can find even this much peace by dreaming falsely, won’t you let me have that? How much more suffering must I endure before peace comes? How many tears must I swallow before I can cry no more? My handful of love wrapped in red, blue, and green paper, touched with colored ink, sealed in an envelope. Let it be pale, cheap, rhythmless—it’s still love, isn’t it! Don’t send it back anymore, my darling!
You’ve changed so much this past year. Actually, you’ve become much busier ever since we first met. So busy that it seems you have no time or even need to think of me for a moment! I never imagined my importance to you would become so fragile. Tell me, what is this thing called longing? I mean, the heart’s longing? You have no heart’s longing for me, so your physical desire isn’t strong either. You have no tenderness for me at all. How easily you’ve escaped the heart’s obligations, so it hasn’t been difficult for you to avoid physical obligations either. Everything is so simple, isn’t it? For you, yes, only for you it’s so easy to forget, to keep forgetting. Look, I don’t bind you to anything, so why do you keep running away from me like this? Should I assume then that you’ve done something wrong? Your behavior is so distasteful! Far too distasteful! Such behavior doesn’t suit you. Do you know why it doesn’t suit you? Because I know you to be a person of great character. I’ve placed you very high. I trust you even more than I love you. And I respect you just as much. I’ve never given anyone such blind trust and respect. Truly! Tell me, how can someone hate a person they can love? You know I don’t want to hate you, don’t you? Truly, my dear, I don’t want to hate you. When you treat me badly, many terrible thoughts about you come to my mind. I don’t want to indulge those thoughts. I don’t want to believe those thoughts are true. I want all of it to be false.
Tell me, if you can give your body to someone, why can’t you give your heart? Why can’t you love them? When every moment spent with someone feels like heavenly bliss, why can’t you make them yours for life? Darling, I could never imagine such a thing. How could someone who fills even my smallest moments with such joy not be my lifelong companion? Why, my love? Why do you think this way? You know, true love, a heart that matches your heart—these things come with great difficulty, are earned through much devotion. Once found, they must never be lost. Over this past year you’ve changed so much, become so unusual and reckless, you’ve lost much of that tolerance you once had. Or were you never really like that at all? Is this your true nature? Was everything I held in my heart about you merely my imagination? Can one be so wrong? Can such mistakes be made? If you are false, then what in this world is true?
You know, my love, I don’t want any other woman to suffer over you the way I have, to shed tears for you as I have. I have many complaints about you, many grievances. But all my complaints and grievances are with you alone. I will never speak of them to anyone else. I don’t want any other woman to complain about you as I do. I don’t want anyone else to hate you. I truly don’t want to hate you, darling! But if I must, let that right to hate remain mine alone, let the audacity to complain about you be mine alone, no one else’s. Let everything about you—the good, the bad, all of it—remain in my memory alone. No one else’s! It takes a right to complain, it takes a right to hate. It takes a right to neglect and despise, or to endure such treatment. Think about it—when you humiliate and neglect me this way, doesn’t it come from having some right over me? Yes, you have a claim on me, and you’re proving it yourself. No matter how much you deny it, this is the truth. I too have a claim on you, the right of love. From that right I say: I will never belong to anyone else, and I will never let you belong to anyone else either. If necessary, I’ll die first, but I’ll never let you go anywhere.
I want everyone in the world to love you. To truly, truly love you. I don’t want anyone to hate you, not even a little. I may not be able to claim any other rights, but let the right to hate you remain mine alone. Beloved, how I love you! I truly, truly love you. I love you too much. I love you more than anything else dear to me, any idea or possession. I can never tell you just how much I love you. I never thought I would love you. Never even imagined I would want you. Yet look—I am no longer the same. You have changed me. After changing me, you yourself have changed. What am I to do now? I love you. I want you, I want you as my own, I want you so close to me. I want you for every moment and for my whole life. I want only you—even if it means trading the entire world for you, still I want you. Yet I never wanted you, never even thought I would. And now you have become my prayer for every moment. I go to sleep with a prayer for you in my heart, and I wake with a prayer for you in my heart. I am amazed at myself! I was never like this! You know what—love never comes with warning. Love just happens—in the mind, in emotions, in the heart, in the soul. I don’t know where it happens, but it does happen. The mind has no room for reason. Don’t think I fell in love with you because of your intellect—actually, when I first saw you, you seemed like a monster to me. Your affection, your love made you beautiful to me. I didn’t fall for your beauty, I fell for the spell of your tenderness. I made your tenderness my own. I bound your heart to my heart. There was no love in me—you awakened love within me. You taught me how to love. No boy has ever had such “courage.” You broke the dam of my patience. Chasing after sunlight, I forgot myself and leaped into fire. But beloved, there was no love in you either! So where did you find so much affection and love? Do you remember, the night before leaving for Japan, you called me at 2 AM after watching a Russian movie? That hero in the movie had no love either—the heroine awakened love in him. Watching that movie reminded you of me, you said. Does that mean I awakened love in you? Or were you lying to me? Or have you told such lies to many others? I believe everything you say! Don’t I have a special place with you? This insignificance I feel with you troubles me deeply, deeply troubles me. Why wouldn’t it trouble me, tell me! I have never given anyone more importance in my life than I give you. No one but you has ever touched my happiness so deeply. I have never come so close to anyone else’s breath! No one has ever loved me so tenderly. Without trust, respect, and love, I cannot even imagine how someone could touch another so intimately. Can one touch a body without touching the soul, beloved? You think I’m terribly old-fashioned, don’t you? Isn’t it better to be such a so-called old-fashioned person than to believe in loveless physical relationships? I want to live old-fashioned, die old-fashioned! I want to live in your love, find happiness in loving you, die with your love.
I don’t want to hate you, I don’t want to live in hatred. The fire of hatred burns the one who harbors it. This is the way of the world.I don’t want to dishonor my love, but darling, you have dishonored my love, you have left me unacknowledged. Pain, beloved, such pain! The ache of a relationship without a name. You’ll never understand that. If you were a woman, then you’d know. Men are accustomed to nameless relationships, while women always want to give their connection a name. That’s when trouble begins. As long as love advances through the body’s demands, love remains pure. The real danger starts when the heart mingles with love. Tell me, are all the women in the world like that lover of yours who left you? The one whose memory mingles with your blood—thinking of her, you punish all womankind and find some kind of demonic pleasure in it, don’t you? Why, darling, why? Why must you make the entire world pay for a punishment that was never yours to bear? Why did you force me into your life? I never wanted this. I was perfectly fine alone. True, there was no love in my life, but at least I had peace! The riches that love gives a person—that same wealth steals away all of life’s other treasures, one by one. The wall that stood between us—I never wanted to break it down. You’re the one who broke it. So when you did break it, why do you want to leave now, darling? You broke the wall only to retreat into the distance, scattering thorns across my path, and trying to pluck out those thorns leaves me bleeding with every moment. The more I see of you, the more respect I feel for gamblers. Whatever else they may do, at least they don’t gamble with life itself. I can’t understand how someone you can draw so close to your very breath can be pushed so far away. How can you drown them in such contempt and condemnation? How can a person do such things? Tell me, could any sane, normal person do this? This doesn’t befit a human being! Someone you can embrace against your chest—how can you then shove them away with such force? Someone with whom you can share secret joys, before whom you can surrender all shame—that same person can be made a stranger in an instant! How can people behave with such betrayal? Far from doing such things myself, I can’t even imagine the thought of doing them. Even speaking harsh words to you makes my head bow with shame. And yet you feel nothing about humiliating me so. Yes, if there are other women like me in your life, then naturally women mean something cheap, trivial, worthless to you. In that case, treating them so carelessly or running away from them would be second nature to you. But I wasn’t like that. Then why did you do this to me? What behavior of mine, what words made you assume I was used to being used? Was I born to live like tissue paper? You were the one who drew me so close, who gave me permission to come near you. I didn’t want it, yet you forced so many things upon me. Of the 6 hours I spent with you that day, for 4 hours I wasn’t myself. But every memory from the remaining 2 hours has become permanently embedded in my mind. Those memories pierce me mercilessly every moment. I often feel the urge to tear all the flesh from my body and throw it in the garbage. To peel away my skin so that new, pure skin might grow there. Every time I remember that day, I spend hours upon hours bathing in the bathroom. All the waters of the world combined cannot wash away my sin. Have you forgotten everything? Or are you pretending to forget? Do you remember nothing at all? Is such a thing even possible? Tell me, don’t you remember? Does no tenderness stir in you for me? Not even a little? When driving down the road, if a dog gets crushed under the car wheels, even that dog’s memory doesn’t just vanish from a person’s mind. Am I lower than a dog? Does your life need only women’s bodies? Is there no place for a woman herself?
When you treat me with such callous indifference, it cuts so deep. Do I deserve such treatment? If I were just ‘anyone,’ could I rest my head upon your chest? I keep a sacred place in my heart for those who matter. Not everyone can be placed everywhere. The space reserved for someone special—no one else can occupy it. This is my philosophy. You cannot give everything to just anyone, my dear. The place you hold within me is precious and sacred. Yet I hold no worth in your eyes. Tell me, beloved, do I not deserve even a shred of respect from you? Stand before a mirror and ask yourself—do I truly have no claim upon you? If you could step away for a moment from that world you’ve built of lies, step out and see—am I not the girl who once touched your happiness? Am I not she to whom you taught the colors of life? Are you not that great teacher from whom I learned to read life anew? For one who has touched your joy, do you have nothing to offer but insults, contempt, reproach, and neglect? Have you become so utterly barren? In what pleasure did you don this crown of poverty? How long have you been living with this infinite emptiness?
It’s been nearly a year now since we’ve had any contact. Tell me, beloved, how are you? How do you control your emotions these days? Or have you strangled even that feeling to death? You haven’t sought happiness with another woman, have you? No, no, I don’t want to think such things! Even thinking this way is sinful! It’s a crime for me to harbor such sordid thoughts about you. One cannot think ill of someone they love. But you know, when you treat me badly, when you behave like a stranger, when you speak as if you don’t know me at all, it hurts so much and terrible thoughts about you creep into my mind. I imagine you seeking happiness with another woman. When I find you on call-waiting even late at night, my heart keeps telling me you’re probably talking to another woman. I try to convince myself—no, my beloved could never be like that. You are the person I know. Then why would this happen? Yet my heart keeps insisting you’re deceiving me. It pains me to think of you as a deceiver. I often spend time in a confused daze, murmuring the same words over and over, the same thoughts spinning endlessly in my head. Tell me, am I going mad? Is this suffering your gift of love?
Dearest Termite,
Believe me, I had no other way left. Perhaps you’ll return this letter too. You know so well how to turn things away! I’m writing knowing that. What else can I do, tell me? What else do I have left to do? Apart from loving you, my power for everything else is so very little. What more can I do to reach you! You’ve blocked every path that leads to you. First you reduced making calls, then you reduced receiving them. Then began the pattern of picking up and hanging up, not speaking, and if you did speak, terrible abuse, pretending not to recognize me. Now you don’t even answer the phone at all. What would happen if you picked up just a little? Even if you hurled a couple of curses at me! At least I’d get to hear your voice! But that too you wouldn’t allow, darling. You started blocking my number. The moment you hear my voice, you block that number. Before you’d at least curse me out, now you don’t even do that. The moment you realize it’s me, immediately—blocked! How quickly your unwillingness springs to life! That too wasn’t enough for you! You blocked me on Facebook! Viber, Messenger, WhatsApp, imo—nowhere can I find you anymore. There won’t be a single text message from me in your mobile inbox. You’ve arranged that too. I send message after message, and you read and delete them. Do you ever actually read any of my messages? I’ve learned to act happy, of course, by thinking that you have read them. What else can I do, tell me—one has to survive somehow! I’ve sent so many letters, you haven’t received a single one. Fifty-seven letters have come back to me, I don’t know where the rest are. When I send you something, you don’t even have the strength to collect it from the courier, darling! What else can I give you except this one love? Six punjabis have come back, I’ve hidden away two nakshi kanthas, I’ve tied up ninety-seven cards in red cloth. The cards and envelopes you sent back—making them required staying awake night after night, dark circles formed under my eyes, my face broke down. I know none of this has any value to you. What is garbage to you is all the life I have! What can I do, tell me—my world is so small! Will you tell me once how I can reach you? Or will you say, what need do you have to reach me? What nonsense! Say it if you must! I will come to you, I will. What’s the need? Yes, there is great need! When I came into this world, I had already decided to keep my heart happy. Nothing else—to keep myself happy, I want to reach you. Life gave me so much, and can’t I give it this small gift in return? Wherever you go, you’ll find me beside you. I’ll stay right behind you. You can never go beyond my line of sight. Do you know why? Because I love you. You are the most joyful mistake of my life, you are my sweet nightmare. Even knowing I’ll never have you, I love only you. I truly love you, darling, I love you so very much. I’ll love you my whole life. More than all my time, more than any happiness of mine, I love you so very, very, very much.
You know, sometimes there’s a peculiar joy in making mistakes. Has that ever happened to you? It’s happening to me. Ever since you entered my life, from the day you became my happiness—my laughter, my song, my sole reason for living, my reason for wanting to die—I’ve chosen the path of endless error, and I live as a traveler on that road. You must be so angry with me, so annoyed, aren’t you? To you I’m perhaps nothing more than habit, but to me you are life itself! I simply cannot live like you—detached, solitary, indifferent! When I find your number busy late at night, terrible thoughts flood my mind, I curse silently, I suspect you, I keep calling obsessively. What should I do, tell me? When your number is busy, the blood rushes to my head. In those moments I lose all sense of right and wrong. I cannot share you with anyone else. Do you know how I spend my days convincing myself that when my call doesn’t go through, I won’t say harsh things to you anymore—that you couldn’t possibly be doing anything wrong, you’re a busy person, maybe you’re talking to someone about work, even if it’s 2 AM, anyone could call you for something urgent, that what I’m thinking about you is sinful, you’re good and I’m bad—all these thoughts and more! But the moment I find you busy, I forget all my resolutions, all reason, all understanding, and become savage. I keep making this mistake. There’s such joy in making this mistake. My sorrow grows around you, and with it grows suspicion and rage. I want all the terrible thoughts that crowd my mind when I can’t reach you to be proven false. I pray that God gives me greater capacity to love you. It hurts terribly to misunderstand you. It hurts to hurt you. When I treat you badly, I feel small in my own eyes. You cannot imagine how high a place you hold in my heart. I want all my suspicions about you to be proven wrong—I want this, truly want this from the depths of my heart. I want you to be happy just with me. I don’t want to fight with you. Yet somehow I cannot control myself. My mind just thinks, keeps thinking—what if you’re talking to some girl, what happens to me then? What if in a moment of weakness you show her the same affection you show me! What if she wants to draw you close the way I do! Your girlfriends are all witches, every one of them! The sound of your kisses rings in my ears every moment. Kissing me might be nothing more than necessity for you, but for me it’s life itself! I have so much tenderness for you, so much love, so very much! When I think you’re getting close to another girl, that someone is snatching you away from me, that you’re moving away—whenever I find your phone busy, such thoughts invade my mind. Tell me, my love, what should I do? I want this thought of mine to be wrong. I’m waiting to lose to myself. Maybe you’re a terrible mistake in my life. But believe me, there’s such joy in living within such a mistake! Please don’t misunderstand me. I love you so very much. It’s because I love you that I act like such a fool. The love of mother, father, siblings, friends—no one’s love can compare to theirs. And yet life craves the love of someone special. Life needs someone particular. Whether we admit it or not, we want someone to live constantly in our feelings. Just like this—even without loving me in the slightest, you feel my necessity in certain moments. And I, loving you, feel your presence in every single moment. This is where my victory lies. It seems to me that the triumph of my love is greater than my life itself. You probably think that without spending even a drop of your precious love on me, you’re getting exactly what you want quite nicely. Still, I’ll say it—my victory is right here! Everyone gets what they need, finds happiness in whatever measure they can! Life shows each person only as much as it reveals, and that’s all they live by, isn’t it? Where your living ends, that’s where mine begins. Don’t be angry at my words. Ever since I’ve loved you, I’ve been talking such nonsense.
You know, you are such a person to me that your affection, your words, your neglect, your scolding, your little care—I love it all. I see your face in my mind’s mirror and without knowing it, the corners of my lips break into a smile! And then sometimes, without knowing it, I start to cry. I wonder, why so much tenderness? What is this happiness for? Why do I feel such deep love for you? Why does so much love for you chase me around? Where were you all these years? Why didn’t you come sooner? Why wasn’t I fulfilled by your love much earlier? Why can’t I have you by my side always? Why didn’t I remain intoxicated by your affection for all these years? For so long in my life, such emptiness has consumed me! Why didn’t you come earlier and complete me? You will never know how tender your affection is, how beautiful your heart is, how deep your love goes! How beautifully you know how to love! Tell me, do all your lovers get drenched in such love? Why should anyone else but me come into your life? Why aren’t you mine alone? Don’t you understand that I am yours alone? How easily this little life could be spent in your love! All my life’s waiting has been for your love. I live only to love you. All the love accumulated in my heart was meant for someone like this— someone who knows how to love. Someone who will enchant me with love, someone I will belong to completely. I never wanted my beloved to leave me and belong to someone else. I have always wanted them to come running to me, drunk on my love, leaving the whole world behind. When I finally have them as my own, I will keep them with great care, bind them with affection. They will understand nothing beyond me. I believe in the power of my love. I will be able to keep them in my heart for a lifetime. They will never go anywhere else again. They will remain mine alone forever. The one for whom my world is built with love, for whom all my affection exists, around whom all my thoughts revolve—the desire to have them will surely make me selfish. What wrong is there in this? For love, I can be selfish, reckless, absurd. I don’t accept any logic, I know no obstacles, I hear no judgment. I simply love love love!
You know, if you hadn’t come into my life, I never would have known what true love feels like. What it’s like to be lost in someone’s love, day after day. Your love has made me homeless, wandering, possessed. You taught me the color of love! Then why do you stand so far away, leaving me so faded? Will you love me just a little? Not much, just a little! I’m pleading with you—love me just a little. With just a touch of your love, I could embrace death itself with a smile, I could bid farewell to entire lifetimes with a dismissive glance. When I think of your love, something stirs inside my chest! Tears break through like a dam bursting. Thinking and thinking until tears gather in my eyes. I don’t want to let those tears fall. I feel as though your love has pooled in my eyes. Let it stay there. I feel such tenderness for you, tenderness that keeps growing. Eventually I can no longer hold the tears at the corners of my eyes. They spill over with a soft splash. That feeling is strangely beautiful! These weary eyes couldn’t bear love, but at least there’s this consolation—I held it for a while. And isn’t that something? How many people are blessed with even that much, tell me? Sometimes I dream you’re leaving me behind to go abroad. I follow you, but you don’t even turn to look at me. Sometimes you stop for a moment to scold me harshly, refusing to let me come with you. I don’t know why I have such dreams. I cry in my sleep. I had this dream again yesterday. And the day before, I dreamed you were terribly angry with me. Wearing a dark blue suit, you were disappearing somewhere far away. I gazed at you with desperate, strange eyes. It hurt so much—the pain of not being able to bring you back. That infinite pain, you’ll never understand. Love brings such suffering, my dear! Tell me now, why so much affection? Why does such tenderness keep me restless all the time? I want to shower you with so much love, darling. So very, very much! When we meet next, I’ll love you endlessly, won’t I? Endless, endless affection. I’ll love you like a madwoman. Unsatisfied heart, unsatisfied thirst, unsatisfied gaze. You are my unsatisfied addiction.
I’m afraid. Has this letter even reached you? Perhaps you won’t want to take this one either, will send it back. Go ahead, send it back. As long as I have the strength to write, I will keep writing to you. No matter which corner of the earth you inhabit, I will write to you, thinking of you! Let no one bother to keep track of my epitaph! My God will know that within those black letters lies the anguish of a sorrowful lover. Across the entire world, handfuls of memories of my love will remain scattered. My love, my suffering will never die. Century after century, all my pain will silently, soundlessly remain awake upon the earth’s breast. Today you may not accept my love, but one day you’ll search for me like a madwoman. That day you won’t find me anymore. Either I’ll have gone insane, or I’ll have left this world entirely. Will you remember me that day and tears come to your eyes? Will you cry even a little? Will you sigh deeply and say, “The poor girl died from loving me!” I will come as a bird to be your companion in lazy afternoons, bloom as wildflowers on your walking path, fall as rain upon your beautiful eyelids, play as sunshine on your rosy lips. Will you recognize me then? Or will you chase me away? Won’t your brow furrow in irritation? Time will record these letters of mine. You know, don’t you, that letters are the most faithful mirror of the heart. Letters are such tender, sensitive things. How much affection, how much tenderness, how much love clings to a letter’s body! And if it happens to be a love letter! Ah! This letter of mine hasn’t fallen into the wrong hands, has it? Better I should die than have it fall into someone else’s hands. A love letter is an invitation to vulnerability and the silent, agreed surrender of dispassionate reasoning. You cannot even imagine how terrible the agony is when a letter doesn’t reach its intended recipient or when that love letter comes back. Yet you have given me exactly that agony. So many times! When my fifty-ninth letter to you came back to my hands, my feeling was as if someone was running a knife through my heart, leaving it wounded and torn. Taking that letter in my hands, it seemed to me that what I held was not a letter, but my own fresh heart writhing in my palm. Tell me, do you know what it feels like to hold your own heart in your hands and stare at it with steady eyes? I know you don’t know. Perhaps you never will! What it feels like to love—that will never be known to you! Darling, do you never feel like loving someone? How can you live so dispassionately? I feel pity for you! How are you? Very, very well, surely. I am not well. For so long now I can’t even remember what it feels like to be well! I so want to be well, darling! I want to cast off this torment. I don’t want to be happy, I want to live free from suffering. Will you give me a small life? I want to live. I want to live with you. You don’t have to give me anything, don’t even give me love, just keep me near, don’t push me away. Have a little mercy on me. I can’t take it anymore, darling!
With every letter of this note, as many drops of tears have fallen from my eyes, just as many drops of fear are gathering in my heart—what if you don’t take this letter either! What if this one too comes back to me! Perhaps I am untouchable to you, but must you be so cruel to my letters as well! Tell me, are you even reading this? Or are you tearing it up without reading, crumpling it into a ball and tossing it into that basket on the right side of your chair? Have you just thrown this letter aside? Will you read it later? Will you remember to read it? Or will you simply forget to even turn it over once to see what’s inside! Tell me, are you reading this? This won’t come back to me, will it? You won’t really send it back, will you? Can’t you spare me a little of your precious time?
You know, it hurts so much! So very much! The agony of having love letters returned is terrible! I don’t want to go through this torment anymore! Even gods don’t return offerings from the heart, my beloved! Please don’t give me this pain again. At least receive it from the courier office. After that, you can throw it away if you want. I’ll know that you took my letter. I’ll close my eyes and imagine that you’ll surely read my letter. If I can find even this much peace by dreaming falsely, won’t you let me have that? How much more suffering must I endure before peace comes? How many tears must I swallow before I can cry no more? My handful of love wrapped in red, blue, and green paper, touched with colored ink, sealed in an envelope. Let it be pale, cheap, rhythmless—it’s still love, isn’t it! Don’t send it back anymore, my darling!
You’ve changed so much this past year. Actually, you’ve become much busier ever since we first met. So busy that it seems you have no time or even need to think of me for a moment! I never imagined my importance to you would become so fragile. Tell me, what is this thing called longing? I mean, the heart’s longing? You have no heart’s longing for me, so your physical desire isn’t strong either. You have no tenderness for me at all. How easily you’ve escaped the heart’s obligations, so it hasn’t been difficult for you to avoid physical obligations either. Everything is so simple, isn’t it? For you, yes, only for you it’s so easy to forget, to keep forgetting. Look, I don’t bind you to anything, so why do you keep running away from me like this? Should I assume then that you’ve done something wrong? Your behavior is so distasteful! Far too distasteful! Such behavior doesn’t suit you. Do you know why it doesn’t suit you? Because I know you to be a person of great character. I’ve placed you very high. I trust you even more than I love you. And I respect you just as much. I’ve never given anyone such blind trust and respect. Truly! Tell me, how can someone hate a person they can love? You know I don’t want to hate you, don’t you? Truly, my dear, I don’t want to hate you. When you treat me badly, many terrible thoughts about you come to my mind. I don’t want to indulge those thoughts. I don’t want to believe those thoughts are true. I want all of it to be false.
Tell me, if you can give your body to someone, why can’t you give your heart? Why can’t you love them? When every moment spent with someone feels like heavenly bliss, why can’t you make them yours for life? Darling, I could never imagine such a thing. How could someone who fills even my smallest moments with such joy not be my lifelong companion? Why, my love? Why do you think this way? You know, true love, a heart that matches your heart—these things come with great difficulty, are earned through much devotion. Once found, they must never be lost. Over this past year you’ve changed so much, become so unusual and reckless, you’ve lost much of that tolerance you once had. Or were you never really like that at all? Is this your true nature? Was everything I held in my heart about you merely my imagination? Can one be so wrong? Can such mistakes be made? If you are false, then what in this world is true?
You know, my love, I don’t want any other woman to suffer over you the way I have, to shed tears for you as I have. I have many complaints about you, many grievances. But all my complaints and grievances are with you alone. I will never speak of them to anyone else. I don’t want any other woman to complain about you as I do. I don’t want anyone else to hate you. I truly don’t want to hate you, darling! But if I must, let that right to hate remain mine alone, let the audacity to complain about you be mine alone, no one else’s. Let everything about you—the good, the bad, all of it—remain in my memory alone. No one else’s! It takes a right to complain, it takes a right to hate. It takes a right to neglect and despise, or to endure such treatment. Think about it—when you humiliate and neglect me this way, doesn’t it come from having some right over me? Yes, you have a claim on me, and you’re proving it yourself. No matter how much you deny it, this is the truth. I too have a claim on you, the right of love. From that right I say: I will never belong to anyone else, and I will never let you belong to anyone else either. If necessary, I’ll die first, but I’ll never let you go anywhere.
I want everyone in the world to love you. To truly, truly love you. I don’t want anyone to hate you, not even a little. I may not be able to claim any other rights, but let the right to hate you remain mine alone. Beloved, how I love you! I truly, truly love you. I love you too much. I love you more than anything else dear to me, any idea or possession. I can never tell you just how much I love you. I never thought I would love you. Never even imagined I would want you. Yet look—I am no longer the same. You have changed me. After changing me, you yourself have changed. What am I to do now? I love you. I want you, I want you as my own, I want you so close to me. I want you for every moment and for my whole life. I want only you—even if it means trading the entire world for you, still I want you. Yet I never wanted you, never even thought I would. And now you have become my prayer for every moment. I go to sleep with a prayer for you in my heart, and I wake with a prayer for you in my heart. I am amazed at myself! I was never like this! You know what—love never comes with warning. Love just happens—in the mind, in emotions, in the heart, in the soul. I don’t know where it happens, but it does happen. The mind has no room for reason. Don’t think I fell in love with you because of your intellect—actually, when I first saw you, you seemed like a monster to me. Your affection, your love made you beautiful to me. I didn’t fall for your beauty, I fell for the spell of your tenderness. I made your tenderness my own. I bound your heart to my heart. There was no love in me—you awakened love within me. You taught me how to love. No boy has ever had such “courage.” You broke the dam of my patience. Chasing after sunlight, I forgot myself and leaped into fire. But beloved, there was no love in you either! So where did you find so much affection and love? Do you remember, the night before leaving for Japan, you called me at 2 AM after watching a Russian movie? That hero in the movie had no love either—the heroine awakened love in him. Watching that movie reminded you of me, you said. Does that mean I awakened love in you? Or were you lying to me? Or have you told such lies to many others? I believe everything you say! Don’t I have a special place with you? This insignificance I feel with you troubles me deeply, deeply troubles me. Why wouldn’t it trouble me, tell me! I have never given anyone more importance in my life than I give you. No one but you has ever touched my happiness so deeply. I have never come so close to anyone else’s breath! No one has ever loved me so tenderly. Without trust, respect, and love, I cannot even imagine how someone could touch another so intimately. Can one touch a body without touching the soul, beloved? You think I’m terribly old-fashioned, don’t you? Isn’t it better to be such a so-called old-fashioned person than to believe in loveless physical relationships? I want to live old-fashioned, die old-fashioned! I want to live in your love, find happiness in loving you, die with your love.
I don’t want to hate you, I don’t want to live in hatred. The fire of hatred burns the one who harbors it. This is the way of the world.I don’t want to dishonor my love, but darling, you have dishonored my love, you have left me unacknowledged. Pain, beloved, such pain! The ache of a relationship without a name. You’ll never understand that. If you were a woman, then you’d know. Men are accustomed to nameless relationships, while women always want to give their connection a name. That’s when trouble begins. As long as love advances through the body’s demands, love remains pure. The real danger starts when the heart mingles with love. Tell me, are all the women in the world like that lover of yours who left you? The one whose memory mingles with your blood—thinking of her, you punish all womankind and find some kind of demonic pleasure in it, don’t you? Why, darling, why? Why must you make the entire world pay for a punishment that was never yours to bear? Why did you force me into your life? I never wanted this. I was perfectly fine alone. True, there was no love in my life, but at least I had peace! The riches that love gives a person—that same wealth steals away all of life’s other treasures, one by one. The wall that stood between us—I never wanted to break it down. You’re the one who broke it. So when you did break it, why do you want to leave now, darling? You broke the wall only to retreat into the distance, scattering thorns across my path, and trying to pluck out those thorns leaves me bleeding with every moment. The more I see of you, the more respect I feel for gamblers. Whatever else they may do, at least they don’t gamble with life itself. I can’t understand how someone you can draw so close to your very breath can be pushed so far away. How can you drown them in such contempt and condemnation? How can a person do such things? Tell me, could any sane, normal person do this? This doesn’t befit a human being! Someone you can embrace against your chest—how can you then shove them away with such force? Someone with whom you can share secret joys, before whom you can surrender all shame—that same person can be made a stranger in an instant! How can people behave with such betrayal? Far from doing such things myself, I can’t even imagine the thought of doing them. Even speaking harsh words to you makes my head bow with shame. And yet you feel nothing about humiliating me so. Yes, if there are other women like me in your life, then naturally women mean something cheap, trivial, worthless to you. In that case, treating them so carelessly or running away from them would be second nature to you. But I wasn’t like that. Then why did you do this to me? What behavior of mine, what words made you assume I was used to being used? Was I born to live like tissue paper? You were the one who drew me so close, who gave me permission to come near you. I didn’t want it, yet you forced so many things upon me. Of the 6 hours I spent with you that day, for 4 hours I wasn’t myself. But every memory from the remaining 2 hours has become permanently embedded in my mind. Those memories pierce me mercilessly every moment. I often feel the urge to tear all the flesh from my body and throw it in the garbage. To peel away my skin so that new, pure skin might grow there. Every time I remember that day, I spend hours upon hours bathing in the bathroom. All the waters of the world combined cannot wash away my sin. Have you forgotten everything? Or are you pretending to forget? Do you remember nothing at all? Is such a thing even possible? Tell me, don’t you remember? Does no tenderness stir in you for me? Not even a little? When driving down the road, if a dog gets crushed under the car wheels, even that dog’s memory doesn’t just vanish from a person’s mind. Am I lower than a dog? Does your life need only women’s bodies? Is there no place for a woman herself?
When you treat me with such callous indifference, it cuts so deep. Do I deserve such treatment? If I were just ‘anyone,’ could I rest my head upon your chest? I keep a sacred place in my heart for those who matter. Not everyone can be placed everywhere. The space reserved for someone special—no one else can occupy it. This is my philosophy. You cannot give everything to just anyone, my dear. The place you hold within me is precious and sacred. Yet I hold no worth in your eyes. Tell me, beloved, do I not deserve even a shred of respect from you? Stand before a mirror and ask yourself—do I truly have no claim upon you? If you could step away for a moment from that world you’ve built of lies, step out and see—am I not the girl who once touched your happiness? Am I not she to whom you taught the colors of life? Are you not that great teacher from whom I learned to read life anew? For one who has touched your joy, do you have nothing to offer but insults, contempt, reproach, and neglect? Have you become so utterly barren? In what pleasure did you don this crown of poverty? How long have you been living with this infinite emptiness?
It’s been nearly a year now since we’ve had any contact. Tell me, beloved, how are you? How do you control your emotions these days? Or have you strangled even that feeling to death? You haven’t sought happiness with another woman, have you? No, no, I don’t want to think such things! Even thinking this way is sinful! It’s a crime for me to harbor such sordid thoughts about you. One cannot think ill of someone they love. But you know, when you treat me badly, when you behave like a stranger, when you speak as if you don’t know me at all, it hurts so much and terrible thoughts about you creep into my mind. I imagine you seeking happiness with another woman. When I find you on call-waiting even late at night, my heart keeps telling me you’re probably talking to another woman. I try to convince myself—no, my beloved could never be like that. You are the person I know. Then why would this happen? Yet my heart keeps insisting you’re deceiving me. It pains me to think of you as a deceiver. I often spend time in a confused daze, murmuring the same words over and over, the same thoughts spinning endlessly in my head. Tell me, am I going mad? Is this suffering your gift of love?