Sub-letter # 11 is another excerpt from my book To Love. All the excerpts of To Love can be found on the To Love section of my site. You can purchase the book on Amazon.
Please know I have added headers to this post that are in the book. It is simply for the blog formatting.
Sub-Letter #11
To my impending pookie,
I’m not writing in the coffee shop today. I am writing in my little studio apartment that overlooks a valley. Well, it would overlook a valley if trees were not in the way. It is still an amazing view.
It is nice writing here. I don’t have people walking by or people talking to distract me from my work. I am doing the distracting all by myself.
A squirrel will run up a tree near my window and I will then stare at the rough muted brown bark of the tree. When the wind rustles a small sapling that lives on the hillside, I will get lost in how the light and shadows make different shades of green. Sunbeams that hit the leaves make a light, happy green that I’m almost positive they bottled to create one of my bottles of paint. The shadows cool the green and adds touches of dark blue into the hue.
Middle School Romance
I will fight the distraction by telling you a story from my childhood.
When I was in middle school, I had a crush on a cute boy who was shorter than me. That made no difference to me. He was popular and was a cool kid. My little tween heart thought he was great.
One morning before class started, he walked up to me near our lockers. He had a question for me. This meant he noticed me, and my answer was at least interesting to him. I was excited to give him whatever answer he needed.
He asked me if I would be his best friend’s girlfriend. That wasn’t the question I wanted him to ask. I still said yes.
By lunch it seemed like everyone knew. I sat with my friends at our normal lunch table. One friend asked me if I was planning on sitting with my boyfriend. My answer to them was no and explained that he could come to me. I didn’t care enough to go to his table and felt as though if he wanted to be my boyfriend, he could put forth the effort.
In my mind there is a question if I ever talked to him again; I don’t remember talking to him. In all honesty, I can’t even remember his name. Maybe it was Pete, perhaps Paul, or it could have been Dave. Paul sounds almost correct, but I don’t think it was that. I even tried asking Ms. Music who was my friend and should have known his name. She came up blank though.
Present day distraction
In the present time there is a fly on the window sill that my desk faces. The little black fly is right in front of my desk. He seems to want to talk or he can’t find the opening of my crank window. Mr. Fly has a good size escape route, but can’t seem to figure the right route.
He found the opening. He just escaped the prison of the window sill. Perhaps he just needed a break from flying and was not stuck. I would like to think he is now off on a journey. No! A hero’s quest; in order for him to fulfill his life’s mission. He must now find the stinkiest pile of fly food and share it with his one true love. I am assuming in this random train of thought flies do have love. I know this may be significantly flawed, but whatever. It is how my mind is distracting me.
I will fight the distractions again with another story from my childhood.
This story is even older than my first boyfriend story. Truth be told, it’s more of my memèrè’s story. I only know it, because she’s told me it multiple times as if I remember.
The Neighbor Boy
I must have been around five. You should know I was never a girly girl and hardly ever wore skirts on my own accord. These facts are relevant to the story.
When I was young, I lived across the street from my grandmother, who I call memèrè, and the family pig farm. My memèrè was watching me, but I ran across the street to my home. I put on a nice, pretty skirt. It was white with little pink flowers and made of tough material, like denim. They may have been cherry blossoms, but they were on a vine. It is the one skirt I remember owning when I was a kid.
When I came back to my memèrè’s, I was in the skirt. She asked me why I changed. My answer was that I wanted to go play with the neighbor boy, and I wanted to make sure he noticed me. I guess I had a little crush on him.
If you get to meet my memèrè, it won’t surprise me if she tells you this story. She’ll also point out I still had shorts on underneath the skirt.
The only time I remember wearing a skirt when I was a kid is when I wore one while playing kickball. I slid into home plate and skinned my knees. I’m pretty sure you aren’t supposed to slide into any plate in kickball, but I did. My memory has me wearing the same white skirt with pink flowers.
It may have been my favorite skirt as a kid. More likely the details of the skirt were not important enough to save correctly, and my memory is adding a likely detail.
More Distractions
Okay, I just got distracted because I looked at my television. The different shows I could record popped into my mind. I also have shows recorded and others I could stream. Maybe I should restart the show about a mad man in a box or the show about two brothers and an angel.
Even the way I stacked the two used tea bags from my earlier drinks is making my mind wander. I wonder if they will fall or if I could use them for some weird art project. Perhaps I can just use them to stain a canvas as a base color. I’ve only used tea to stain paper to make the paper look old and distressed. Using tea bags to stain or paint a canvas is something I’ve never tried.
I think I need to share my writing with you and go do something else for a little while.
Want More?
To Love is sold on Amazon and if you would like to read more excerpts you can go the To Love Updates section of this site. I also created some fun promotional videos on Youtube.
