If God Wills

An unfinished concept I am currently working on.

-- Cas

A box of unopened letters sat at the left hand corner of her dresser. Each one was properly labeled by a date in which it had been carefully written. Some of the envelopes felt more full than the others, an odd shape coated in thin white paper. I ran my fingers over the indentations, creating a new crease for every lump. Some of these must have gone undisturbed for decades now. The letters were not addressed to anyone. They were numbered, dated, and in order, but the blank space where a name should be etched my curiosity. I ran my thumbnail along the adhered lip of the very first envelope, careful not to rip the seal in case I regretted this action. I knew I could seal the envelope again as if it had never been opened, however sealing my guilt would be another story.


A bright yellow paper was neatly tucked inside the envelope's pocket. It had been folded twice, and reminded me of opening my acceptance letter from University. Unfolding the letter, it was not revealed to whom these words were intended.


I cannot wait to see you. My whole life I spent wondering what it would be like to meet someone like you. No one around me could even imagine I would long for something in the way I long for you. You are the most beloved on earth, and I wanted to make sure that you knew you were always wanted in every way. I love you.


There were hundreds of these unopened letters, all carefully filed, ranging from the time my sister was seventeen, until her untimely death at thirty-one. I don't like to place the blame on anyone, but the rest of my family likes to blame Frank. She met him sometime in the last three years, where he magically fell into her pathway, blocking any sort of escape. He was charming, though. He did it with flowers. My sister was a beautiful woman of the earth. Her garden grew taller than most grade school children can stand. She wore oils on her neck that smelled of sandalwood and her natural beauty did radiate like the glowing moon. She was able to stop most men directly in their path. It wasn't uncommon for her to start a story with so-and-so confessed his undying love for me today, which would follow by a flattered giggle, a sigh, or a look that said yes, him again. Her entertained audience would faun over her tales. Some of the women would become perturbed and jealous. They would make a tscch noise with their teeth and demand my sister tell them right then why men didn't react the same way over their presence. I knew the answer was because these women reeked of cheap alcohol, cheap tobacco, and cheap sex. My sister, the caring soul she was, would insist men do react the same way over these vulgar women. Knowing fully well that I have nothing better to do than eavesdrop on a lazy afternoon, she would call me into the room. Charley, doesn't Muriel look absolutely gorgeous today? My pupils would shoot at her like like chiseled daggers. Oh, oh, my yes. Is that a new cardigan you're wearing? The mauve does wonders for your eyes. And they giggled and blushed and deemed me a ladies' man. It was enough to get them to agree with my sister. If only they had realized that men who know what things like cardigans and the different shades of purple were, are typically attracted to other men. It was a secret I had only confided in my sister. Her torturous moments of forcing me to compliment her idiotic friends were to help us both.


I thought back to who my sister could have been dating at just seventeen. It was such a long time ago, so long that I probably wouldn't have understood what dating was at that age. There are no significant faces that stand out to me. I have watched my sister struggle through daily life in ways no one else even bothered to recognize, beyond her love life. Yet she always radiated that seemingly flawless beauty. Walking in on her with a butane lighter and small key she used as a cattle prod, making small marks on her inner thigh, she made me promise not to tell. I told her I would not tell, but that she needed some kind of help. I told her what she was doing was not right, nor was it natural. What I hadn't realized at the time was that she was doing something perfectly natural. My sister was longing for a fast route to happiness, an almost too common goal among the human species. While her way was somewhat unconventional, the pain she felt on the inside from the pressures of maintaining an image of perfection was stored underneath her nylons, in several parallel lines.


I am trying so hard, but Frank will not change his mind. I am at a loss. This is the man I love. He promised me so much. A fairytale life, a beautiful family, a steady career. But that has hardly happened. We've lived in the same apartment for nearly two years now, and he can't even talk about marriage. Yet he swears he loves me and that I will be the woman of his life. And when he comes home smelling like a bouquet of dirty sweat and infidelity, I brush it off. It is not his fault I am not what I promised I would be. Sometimes when I write you, I wonder if I am telling you too much. How will you look at him the same, should he be that important figure in your life? I know I will regret this.


Each letter I read seemed more personal than the last. I couldn't go through all of them, as it was not my right. The sensation that these words belonged to somebody, however, gave me the motivation to read on. I learned secrets that were not intended for me. How my sister secretly hoped I would one day find a woman to happily fall in love with and start my own family. How she despised our father for walking out on my mother after I was born. How the burns on her thighs were just the tip of the iceberg. My sister had been going to therapy for the past three years. She did not get better. Frantically ripping through each envelope, less delicately than the last, I had uncovered how the most beautiful girl in the room went unrighteously ignored for far too long, until the day she swallowed poison. Tomorrow, she will once again be the most beautiful girl in the room, and everyone will see.


Somewhere in the middle of the stack, I was able to locate the culprit. I decided to keep her failure a secret, as she had for so long.


And so I write to you, my unborn child, my concept, so that one day you will read these letters and maybe understand that I was once like you. I remember being a young child and feeling like I could never relate to my parents, no matter how much they told me they loved me or tucked me in to sleep. I will give these to you at an age that you will be able to appreciate the time I have devoted to you. I have written for you candidly about my life so that you understand even I have had my own personal struggles. I was not perfect. I did things that were downright repugnant. Things that no one would expect of me, things I would tell no one. I have made choices that were regrettable at the time, but they shaped who I am today. I want you to understand the true value of life and that there are no mistakes. My time capsule to you, for your seventeenth birthday, where this all began for me. I hope that you can see we are not very different, something that never came to terms for me with my own parents. Feel free to ask me any questions. I've enclosed small pieces of my life in each envelope -- a photo here, a bracelet there, and a myriad of revealing facts that you probably wish you never knew. My hope is that each humiliating detail will bring you closer to me, as there is nothing I have ever wanted more in this world than to have a loving family of my own.


When the autopsy revealed that my sister had recently suffered a miscarriage, I tried not to act surprised. Frank left the room, while my mother sobbed. Back at the apartment, I sat on my sister's bed and stared at the box of envelopes. If not physically, her tiny child existed through ink and paper. I cradled each piece between my arms, singing softly under my breath.


Good evening, good night. With roses adorned.
With carnations covered, slip under the covers.
Early tomorrow, if God wills, you will wake once again.
Early tomorrow, if God wills, you will wake once again.