Work Text:
Dear Pat,
This deep-seated sadness and longing, what should I chalk it up to? Is it your voice I’m missing, boisterous laughter overlaid by ambient music? Or is it your scent, so subtle I’d have to crowd into your space to smell it amidst this perfumery?
At this table for four, I’m sitting alone. I imagine your handsome smile, broad-shoulders covered in that navy blue button down I got you last year, sitting across from me, one leg on top of the other, arms-crossed.
You’d give me the most infuriating smile and we’d get kicked out either for arguing in public and making a scene or for getting caught red-handed making out in the guest bathrooms.
They have nice black and white tiles, very chic, but not at all soundproof. The soap smells of lemongrass, like the reed diffuser your mom gifted you for Christmas, and the aftershave your aunt got you, which you keep forgetting to use.
The tea is bland. I’m eating good, delicious food, but I’m still sad, 555.
There is a table for twenty right behind me. A gathering of friends, young couples, married, with their toddlers and newborns. The head of their party is dressed in a white, flowy dress, elegant cut, red heels, brown hair let down and curled. Maybe in ten years, Paa would look just like that.
One of the couples, they have a kid, two kids; a beautiful girl, no more than four years old I’m guessing, wearing a cornflower blue dress. Her tiny, supple hands grab the edge of the table. She wanders around between the adults’ legs in her little pink sneakers, soft, silky black hair swishing about, so precious, so untouched by life yet. No matter how far she goes, she wanders back to the baby stroller where her little sibling sleeps, clad in a red jumpsuit.
If we have kids, will they be as cute?
Small crescent eyes like yours, mushroom bangs like you had as a child, tiny gold earrings, or an anklet - your pa would insist - and a fish-print mask with colorful little guppies.
I can teach them English, you can teach them Math. Science, acting, music; We’ll support whatever dream they have, we’ll let them fly as far and wide as they please. We’d accept whoever they bring home.
On weekends we can build furniture together, I can teach them how to cook, you can teach them how to fix a leaking sink. How to sew and mend clothes. How to speak up their minds. We’ll be happy.
I can’t wait to start a family with you.
I miss you.
Come visit me. Then I won’t look so crazy for drinking alone before noon.
Let’s go to the temple and make merit together the next time I come home. It’s been too long since we did it last.
Yours,
Pran.
P.S. The office printer broke down yesterday and the technician was unavailable. It's a good thing you learned to fix our printers. After years of watching you and struggling for an hour, I could resolve the issue. Isn't your boyfriend the absolute greatest?