a letter to space

1

hello there.

i owe you an apology.

are we friends?

if not, then, aside from the gaps of time and space and distance and age, which mean something but not much, it is my fault.

for all the off-and-onness  of our acquaintance i’ve played jekyll and hyde.

jekyll was a jerk, pure and simple — strait-laced, stuttering, silent … stony, even, if you like that word.

hyde was a capricious, mischievous, argumentative tease … and, what was worse, a chattering know-it-all.

neither was necessarily very nice to you.

i’m very sorry. truly.

if this is home and you come back to it, and if we meet again, i’d like to be neither jekyll nor hyde.

i would like to be a kind person, more concerned about you than about the inside of my own mind.

maybe that means i would apologize in person, or maybe it means i wouldn’t write imaginative letters to the ether where i know you won’t read them.

i half-remember an expression on your face once when you were very nice … and i was very rude. i didn’t mean to be, didn’t deliberately try to dampen the conversation … you were nice and i was nervous and a nitwit.

i would like, if we meet again, not to be.

i would like to be friends.

like a normal person.

i’m sorry.

pax?