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“Dear Lisbon,” — that’s how each of his letters begins. Retrieving a new sheet of paper, Jane automatically writes these two words, and it’s the quickest part of everything he writes.
It takes him less than a week to catch himself imagining Lisbon’s smile if she heard about his recent amusing miscommunication in Spanish, and how her eyes would fill with a dreamy sparkle as he described the blueness of the water and the shimmering gold of the sunset. To be honest, it only takes Jane five days to buy a stack of paper and a pen from a nearby shop.
When he first sits at the table, hovering that very pen over the paper, a vivid image flashes through his mind: Lisbon’s surprise upon receiving his letter for the first time, how her eyebrows would raise with each line, and then, somewhere near the middle, a soft smile would touch her lips.
Perhaps the FBI would find it much easier to track him if he started writing regularly, and Jane definitely plans to, but, firstly, he’s in Venezuela, and secondly, Lisbon’s smile is worth all the risks.
However, in reality, things turn out to be a bit more complicated.
He writes about everything: the waves, the weather, the fishermen, the mangoes growing along the roads, but between the lines, she is everywhere. And that’s the hardest part: not to lower the tone, not to fall into melancholy, not to end with a simple “I miss you”, but into something much deeper, lurking, hooking the heart every time he writes: “Dear Lisbon”.
Sometimes it happens accidentally.
“Dear Lisbon,
Last time, I made a list of things you would undoubtedly fall in love with if you were here for even a day. Today, I decided to make a list of things you would hate here.
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Mosquitoes.
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Random sand in your food if you ordered food near the beach.
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Me, when I called it an 'exotic experience.'
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The absence of your favorite coffee.
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Me (again), because I would say that the tea here is much better.
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The way I would look at you and smile when you frown at my words.
It seems this list has become not about what you would hate here. I want to write something that would make you smile after a gloomy workday, but somehow everything comes back to you. Looks like I really miss you.”
Jane looks at the crumpled pile of paper in the corner of the table. The salty smell of the sea wafts in from the window, music plays somewhere down the street, and he could tell her about it. Actually, he was going to. Jane exhales, crumples another draft, and adds it to the others. He should finally throw them away.
“Dear Lisbon,
Today was the Day of the Dead here. The streets were filled with flowers and candles, children with painted faces, someone played the flute. Everyone remembers those they've lost with joy, not sadness.” The following sentences are crossed out, scribbled over with horizontal lines so that they are unreadable, but as he shifts his gaze from the window back to the sheet of paper, the words clearly surface before his eyes: “I can't do that. Probably never will. But I thought of you. Smiling and rolling your eyes at my joke. That saved the day a bit.”
Jane shakes his head before leaning back in his chair and turning the letter into a crumpled mess.
Sometimes it's much easier — the letters form themselves under the pen, and Jane almost doesn't feel the clawing melancholy; the letters come out as he imagines them — light, a bit about the past week, a few interesting facts, some jokes, because Jane knows how boring her life must be without his humor. In the letters, he appears happy. At least, he’s supposed to be.
“Dear Lisbon,
There are many things here I want to show you. For example, a local parrot that swears so much that the fishermen blush. Or a man who sells papaya juice and tells every customer his love story. His name is Raul, and he says the hardest thing he did was letting her go. That the hardest part was accepting it and somehow living with it. Oh, I guess that was unnecessary.
I promised myself I wouldn't write nonsense. That it would be a simple, good letter.
Just "hello", just "'I'm alive", just "you would like the parrot and the papaya juice". Looks like I'll have to start over.”
Jane twirls the pen with the same dexterity as if it were a coin, looks at the sheet that will end up among the same melancholic, entirely unsuitable letters to bring a smile to her face. But he still writes these three words: “I miss you”.
Jane prefers not to think too much about the scraps of paper in the corner of the table — not only are there failed letters, but also fragments of what didn't even manage to become them, some thoughts that were supposed to start with the calmness of the waves, then slowly transition to a long rain and the subsequent strip of a rainbow, but the sentences in them froze, breaking and turning into shards that refused to come together into a whole.
“Today, nothing special. Just a day. Just people. Just thoughts. Just the absence of you.”
He should really spend more time outside. Maybe write to her about the colorful fish and tell her about the other strange and wonderful creatures he’s seen here. She deserves something good, not another line about his longing and emotional turmoil.
“<…> i saw a woman today with brown hair and a black shirt. For a second, I thought it was you. My heart skipped a beat. Or maybe it beat twice. Of course, it wasn’t you. I wish it had been”
The last word isn’t even finished. Silly. Jane looks at the sentence crossed out with lines and still sees what should have been at the end. He shakes his head and picks up a new sheet.
“Dear Lisbon,
I haven’t written for a few days. I tried. Every time I started the same way — ‘Dear Lisbon’ — but it always ended in silence. Though, you don’t need to know that. What you need is for me to be okay. So, I’m okay. No, that’s no good. I’ll take a new sheet and write about how I saw dolphins from the shore. Maybe tomorrow something will happen that’s worth you reading about.
The woman from whom I buy paper has already started asking why it runs out so quickly. She wonders if I’m writing a book or something.. If only she knew what it’s really for…”
And truly, Jane thinks, so many sheets wasted. He hasn’t thrown a single one out. They gather dust in the corner, irritating the eyes and thoughts.
“ Dear Lisbon,
Sometimes I think I can still hear you say my name. It’s strange — I’m so far away, and yet you’re still somehow near. I think you’d laugh at me today. I spent forty minutes choosing between two ice cream flavors because one of them was vanilla. Out of all the flavors, you always liked vanilla best. So I picked it. It reminded me of when we ate it together that time. A different country, different people — and I’m still thinking of you. Too often. I think far more often than I should.
It’s really beautiful here, Lisbon. Truly. And I’m trying. Trying to keep living. Trying to be… happy. To be worthy of living. Trying to be. That’s already something, I guess.
Tonight’s sunset is especially beautiful. I wish you could see it. I wish you were here.”
He holds the letter in his hands a little longer than necessary. The paper is still warm from his palms. Jane runs his finger over the crossed-out line, then carefully folds the sheet. One fold. Then another. Right down the center. He’s going back to the U.S. today. On the table lies a stack of others — crumpled, scratched through, filled with rambling sentences and cut-off thoughts. Jane places the new letter on top, neatly, unhurriedly. He looks at them as if they’re something infinitely fragile.
He breathes in deeply. Exhales.
He can’t allow himself to just throw them away. But burning them — that’s different.
Jane gets up, gathers the letters, and steps out of the house. The air smells like sea salt and arepas, full of loud conversations and laughter. Lisbon would’ve surely complained about the unbearable heat — but then she would’ve smiled anyway, when he showed her the sunset, spread across the sky like watercolors. Jane feels happiness rising inside him — more than he’d felt the entire time he was here — just from the thought of seeing her soon.
He doesn’t know what he’ll say first. Maybe he won’t say anything and just hug her. But that doesn’t matter. Jane knows one thing for sure — he’ll finally see her again, and for now, that’s enough.