Letter V

My Beloved,

I have heard nothing from you. I do not know where you are or what has become of your days. Whenever I lose all trace of you, I feel as though I myself have been forgotten, as though it is you who have erased me. There is a profound sorrow in being forgotten. To know that not even a single page in the library of your mind still belongs to me. That nowhere is it written that I was once a book upon those shelves.

I fear being forgotten far more than I fear forgetting. I fear the day when a fish no longer remembers its sea. I think of the celebrated actor whose face once illuminated the silver screen, only to retire into silence and oblivion. Of that famous kiss upon the world's highest bridge, remembered no more. Of the moments that once made hearts tremble, now lost to time. Who, in the heart of winter, remembers the fallen leaves that once composed the brilliance of autumn? Leaves buried beneath the snow of forgetfulness.

Whenever I lose sight of you and the weight of being forgotten settles upon my shoulders, I think of all those who have slipped from memory. Perhaps being forgotten is itself a summons to remember those whom the world has abandoned. Who remembers the hungry starlings wandering across barren plains? The elderly, forgotten even by those closest to them, who think instead of the birds and fill their coat pockets with millet. Or tell me, who has ever written a masterpiece in the fullness of perfect union? It is in the barren days of absence, in the season of being forgotten, that the rhymes return and the buds of poetry awaken into green.

My Beloved,

I have heard nothing from you, and I know now that I have been forgotten. Like the faded pattern of the tiles in an old courtyard pool, bleached beneath years of sun until no one can even name the design that once adorned it. Something within me has arrived at this quiet certainty. It whispers relentlessly: You have been forgotten. Like those nights when sleep paralysis presses upon your chest, you scream with all your strength, yet no sound escapes your throat. Even I cannot hear my own cry, let alone you, who might have remembered me.

Yet this awareness of being forgotten marks the beginning of a new season in my life. A season devoted to remembering the forgotten.

I visit the abandoned mansions of the city, houses where children's laughter once echoed through the halls, where lovers' hurried breaths mingled with the soft warmth of spring sunlight. Mansions now wrapped in ivy climbing over their columns, porches, and sunlit balconies, where silence has become the loudest voice. Places nature longs to swallow whole until no trace of them remains. For to go unseen, to go unnoticed, is the final step before oblivion. Just as you no longer see me.

My Beloved,

I have accepted my own forgottenness and stepped into the fifth season of my life: the season of remembrance.

The season of recalling extinct species. Of remembering soldiers who fell without a name upon their dog tags. Of honoring the women and men defeated by time, whose youth was sacrificed in its relentless march. Of weathered trees rendered invisible by the loss of their leaves. Of the quiet children forever drowned beneath the cries of their louder siblings.

I remember my own forgottenness by remembering those whom everyone else has forgotten.

I seek out the ones who lost. Those more exhausted than the victors could ever be. I wait beside the finish line until the very last runner arrives, only so I can tell them:

"I remembered you. Someone was waiting here for you."

Now that everyone else has gone, the flags have been lowered, and the winners celebrate beneath the city's lights, raising glasses in triumph, I remain with the forgotten losers of the race.

What could be more beautiful than a single lamp left burning and someone in this world willing to wait for your return?

My Beloved,

This city is overflowing with forgetting and with the forgotten. People lost beneath the roar of the crowd. Dust-covered cinema seats counting down the days to their own end in the storeroom of an abandoned theater.

Perhaps one day, you and I will unlock the doors of that cinema together. We will sit in those forgotten seats and watch once more the kisses lost to time, reliving them ourselves. We will remember those famous actors. Amid the clamor of the streets, we will hear the quiet, living voice of the rain. We will look at the dried chewing gum clinging stubbornly to old brick walls and remember the sweetness of days long past. Perhaps we will tie ribbons to every branch where birds once perched—in memory of claws that no longer rest there.

I will keep visiting the forgotten until you remember me again. I will keep visiting the men and women who wait behind windows overlooking the street until I remember myself once more. I will keep brushing the dust from abandoned benches until, one day, two people fall in love there and sit side by side. Until I remember. Until I come to your mind. Until you remember me. Until the winter tree remembers its spring and blossoms again. Until our laughter rises once more above everything else. I will go on remembering, until I, too, am remembered. I will stir the sea into endless waves until, at last, the fish looks back and recognizes its own ocean.