I fucking hate the snow, I am burning up in here with the heater on and where did they bring all that tea? There is only so much sweet Turkish apple tea I can swallow before I am taken back to Europe where the languages mingle and crossing borders is easy in cars, on trains, only they don’t get what I am saying. And every day is spring break, maybe, because topless beaches and schnapps abound.

If that’s what you want, I can show you the memorials and the histories that mix and match and fight and make up and we could get a neat postcard collection out of this.

This continent is impossible to contain in a few sentences, each country a mystery to me, each advance in a bar tainted by my hampered language skills. That I am chasing experiences more than I am money is news even to me.

I am a fool of writing, at writing, in writing and certainly on paper. What remained unsaid is what I need to say the most, so bear with me dude. Our arms touched on the baseball field and you just laughed. In my memory we had soda after the game and discussed a whole lot of issues, but my memory is flawed and when I asked Nina about what you had said about that night, she looked at me funny and told me they had been at the movies after playing, and what the hell was I talking about? So I guess we did not really hang out, although it would have been a logical sequence of events. Skin on skin is an invitation into friendship, is it not? I have not told you lies, although I wanted to. It would have been a logical sequence of the truth. My credentials are positive, encouraging, some might write a letter of recommendation for my soul, yet how to fucking tell you that I don’t know. If we didn’t spend time, and you are not in between friends, how do I know if there’s some space to be occupied? You better write that letter we discussed in between throws, and I will buy you an ice cream cone come summer.

As Eliza’s shopping trip neared its end, she stopped in front of a paper and card store. Halloween cats waved at her from inside a multi-colored display window. If it weren’t ridiculous, she would have pressed her nose against the glass. Inside the store, postcards, greeting cards and all kinds of paper lured Eliza into opening her wallet. Surely she needed something to write on. Surely her pen companion in another country would appreciate her thoughtful choice of prettily transformed tree. Surely this tiny package next to the cash register, containing sheets and envelopes, was destined to be her purchase.

The deep red hue of the paper appealed to Eliza’s sense of inappropriate wordings in letters.

Eliza sat down at her kitchen table and carefully freed the stationary set from its plastic wrap. She smelled the ink, which was mostly chemicals. The imprinted forest scene on the sheets had completely blended into the paper structure and was invisible to her touch. Eliza was not sure if this was an expression. She had better not write it in her letter. Other topics off limit in order to keep an appearance: that awesome joke she laughed about but that was sort of embarrassing. That she had maybe not acknowledged the possibility of a perfect storm yet and didn’t feel as tense as she should. Her collection of animal stickers she might add to the letter but would likely not. They were gifts! Still, she conversed via handwriting with a guy who seemed too eloquent and sophisticated for squirrel stickers. The first line could make or break a letter. “Dear Ash.”

Yep, it was working.

Dear Willa,

I keep inviting you to visit me and you keep refusing. Under normal circumstances this must mean I should finally put that pen down. But you see, I am melting here in the relentless heat and there is literally nothing cold in my life. Except you, if you came here. Your icy voice, the sharp fragments of insult you hurl at me will both definitely serve the purpose. The way you clutch my hand too hard with your cold fingers, for example, will bring some relief. Or if I could pursuade you to tell me again how you had been sleeping with your softball coach while being with me, I can almost feel me freezing up inside already. I guess if you really can’t drive out here, then at the very least I will have to ask you to again and again. I can linger over your creative ways of rejecting me and embrace the strong breeze of cold cold words coming my way.