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When Daisy left she wrote a letter.
Or, she tried to. She wrote it in her head.
She wrote it in bruises on her arms and fractures in her bones. She wrote it with the blood on her hands.
She left them a letter so that they would understand.
Didn’t she?
It was a good letter. No really. It was.
It was the kind with words that she never wanted to stop reading. The kind with pages that don’t turn and paragraphs that loop around each other until the sentences weave together and the ending becomes the beginning and so the story goes on.
It was the kind that never dies.
There was a moral. It was that kind of letter.
The kind that would make it right. The kind that set the balance back where it belonged on the scale of karmic justice so that fates were never stolen and sins were paid for only by the sinners.
It was a good letter.
In fact, it was a dream come true kind of letter.
If dreams were bottled lighting and a view of explosions from the sky. If nightmares were waking up in the morning and living with ghosts.
They called him the Ghost Rider. Because of course they did.
And honestly, Daisy thought it was kind of a dumb name. Like, was he riding a ghost? Wasn’t it usually the other way around, where the ghost hitches a ride on you?
But it’s the kind of name where if you say it with blood on your knuckles and fire in your soul then people will look. And people will pay attention.
Daisy could respect that.
So when Daisy met the Ghost Rider and she looked into his flames and he looked into her soul, she gave him her letter.
Not good enough.
“I’m fine.”
That was it. That was the whole letter.
It was an I miss you kind of letter.
The kind that she folded into the pages of an old journal inside a cardboard box that was locked in the back of a van where she fell asleep to pictures of smiles and blue eyes and dreams of the way things were before she wrote the letter.
Not to be specific, or anything.
Because Daisy never wrote that letter.
So if she heard the words in her sleep and if she mumbled them under her breath and if she begged them to the devil, well, that must be a lie.
She still has shit to do, after all.
“I'm having trouble with my van. Yesterday, out of nowhere, it just, burst into flames.”
She’s that kind of snarky asshole. The kind who smiles while she raises her cup of coffee because she charmed her way into his life as she looks at him and says, I see you.
Well, he sees her, too.
It was a goddamn good-looking letter.
It was covered in eyeshadow and wrapped up with leather blankets. It was a painting of blue and yellow and purple.
It was a prettily fucked-up letter.
And isn’t that what they said, that broken things are beautiful?
Dandelions that flew away in the summer breeze.
Nice things.
Fragile things.
The shrapnel of a bomb scotch-taped back together.
She’s missing something here.
It was a didn’t make any sense kind of letter.
The kind they pretend is shallow but it’s really deeper than they know what to do with, deep enough to drown in. The kind where the ink spills onto the surface of the page and the press of the pen only serves to sever the fibers even more.
It was the kind of letter that said, “It’s okay,” when it was, in fact, not.
What it was, was bruised and bloody and broken.
Bruises are bleeding under the skin after a trauma.
It happened below the surface. It happened when the blood vessels that lay underneath ruptured. Bruises are, by definition, internal trauma made external.
Daisy was covered in bruises.
Her soul was broken, and a soul can never heal, so all her sharp edges just forced their way out.
But they served a purpose. So that made it okay.
Didn’t it?
She didn’t put that in the letter.
“Seems to me your thing is serving penance.”
He’s that kind of perceptive asshole. The kind that couldn’t just kidnap her, he had to call her out, too.
Because she was looking for the right words to finish the sentence that would complete the paragraph that would tie up all the loose ends. And whatever the words were that would make it okay, those weren’t it.
And that just wouldn’t do.
It was a went down fighting letter.
That was what she said when she slammed the door and locked them out and locked herself in. That was what she meant when she aimed her knife for the shoulder instead of the throat.
“This is my fight.”
Those were the words she was looking for.
Weren’t they?
It was a tired of fighting letter.
It was a nothing to lose kind of letter.
It was kind of a lie of a letter.
It was the
“You don’t get to choose who cares about you.”
“We’re in this together.”
“We missed you.”
“I forgive you.”
kind.
It was the not alone kind.
It was a wishes it was special kind of letter.
Because if it was not, then that meant there were more bruised bodies and more broken souls. And that was not beautiful. That was just tragic. And there was nothing beautiful about tragedy.
Tragedy was not some romantic thing. Tragedy was dying to stop someone from killing themselves. Tragedy was not being able to stop herself from trying it again anyway. Tragedy was crumbled remains and snapped spines and blood on the ground.
Tragedy was ugly as all fuck.
Tragedy was a word that lost all meaning because she just kept drowning in it.
Daisy wrote a letter. She wrote it in her head and on her skin.
And she thought it looked better like that. Broken. So she kept writing.
She wrote until her words caught fire.
And burned so strongly that death itself could not touch it.
It was a getting better letter.
Not yet, it said.
So she took the flames instead of the ashes. And she carried it with her.
She carried it when she waded through rivers of gasoline.
She carried it when her sleeping was a dream only because her waking was a nightmare.
She carried it through time and space and reality itself.
She carried it all the way home.
It was a sew up her skin and bandage her wound and wrap up her arm in a cast kind of letter.
The kind that she felt when she finally stopped running. When she breathed through her lungs and finally there was oxygen in her body.
The kind where gentle touch finally stopped hurting.
Daisy writes a letter. But no one ever reads it. Instead, she just keeps writing it.
She writes and writes until all that remains of the old one is scars.
And if there is a moral, she is going to keep finding it.
And if there is a story to be told, she is the one who is going to be telling it.
This is the letter.
It is the still alive kind.
The kind where words that used to mean nothing now mean something and when she says, “This is not a sacrifice play,” she means it.
It is the kind that is always changing because she is always changing, because she is still breathing.
It is a good letter.