Dear Tom: An Inquiry
(in form of a poem)
-
Dear Tom,
I wish I were dead and gone
like a summer's glimpse of noontime breeze, as fleeting
in memory as the taste of snow when 'round
comes June.
I grow so tired somedays, trying to finish the papers –
thick, white, neverending, I'm only twenty, how can this all be
my work, my burden, my responsibility? My quill feels
heavy those days and my fingers numb, knuckles too stiff
to bend around it, and even as I worry if Da
will be upset that I can't finish it all on time, I remember you,
Tom.
I thought you looked like Harry – I know you hate
him, Tom, detest him, loathe him, but
I still love him, please understand – when I was younger,
thinking maybe when he was seventeen he might
look like you. But he grew wiry, tall and
elegant where you were tall and lethal, dark with
softness where you are dark with threat.
You don't exist anymore, can't you just leave me
alone? I don't want you seeping in me, driving my quill from
my numbing grip as this ghostly
memory of you croons deadly love in my ears, lean fingers
picking at the coarseness of my red hair, touching
and stroking my nape as you frighten me – you
never face me, why am I so scared of remembering your face –
murmuring and comforting old pains before you let
your soul flow into my essence.
Am I mad, Tom, to recall you and think it is your fault when my
tired nerves pluck my bones into a gradual stiffness?
You would think me crazy, wouldn't you, to know of the
strange quiver in my chest when I think of your
strong fingertips – Harry's are slender, so different from
yours – violating the sanctity of my rented room,
probing callously against the skin of my neck, ruddy to match my damned
fiery hair.
It does not do to think of great evils, remembering the
deep shades of their eyes or the pleasant curve of the squared
chin; you are Voldemort, one I hate and fear, fear most of all, but, oh
Tom, you are dead now, you are gone. I can
think of you now without fear you will know, slaying
my family in our tidy, worn beds. But I wonder, Tom, if it is safe, even
now, to feel a curious tightening in my heart at the thought of
you, swallowed in evil or not.
You were to kill me, Tom, without a glance back at the silly
heartbroken first-year who trusted you
so implicitly. I told you everything I felt or thought, my
fears and loves and half-known child desires. You knew of my
confusion over Harry – oh, but, Tom, I didn't mean for you to
act so jealous, I never thought to hurt you, I
didn't even know you were my bane and torture, all I
loathed and cried in fright of – and all my longing for him.
You were told of my first cyclic bleeding and even
if I think it a foolish thing now, simple and
so very idiotic, I was, I am, thankful that you laughed
and instructed me on a potion to ease the sudden crippling agony.
I felt a fool when you chided my fright at it, but you relaxed my terror.
You could have killed me then, added something I
would have mixed in with no thought otherwise and taken, ridding
yourself of the pest that was –
that is – Virginia Weasley. I was needed, though,
to serve as your final piece in that elaborate puzzle,
but I don't think you ever knew how hard it was to hurl
your diary – my diary – our diary
in poor Moaning Myrtle's loo and leave it,
running as I felt a peculiar tearing deep inside.
Tom, did you take a piece of my soul when I turned and fled?
Do you hold that missing jagged piece still, laughing
at me though Harry – don't be mad, Tom – killed you, finished you
so many years ago? And those nights after I threw you away,
I dreamt an uneasy trickle of random images, sensations,
thoughts, until in my mind I saw you catch my face in pinning
fingers, a dangerous grin on your own handsome face.
"Thank you kindly, Ginny," you whispered in a double-edged voice,
and I stared, horrified and mesmerized by this ethereal stranger of seven-and-ten
years, once, and you kissed me – too rough a kiss for an eleven-year
old girl, but I surely dreamt it and nothing more.
"You've given me into his hands."
I want that piece of my soul back, Tom; I want sanity and
freedom from guilt; I want to have never let you steal my heart as you
wove to kill Harry; I want to see your face and keep you
from haunting me.
Leave me alone, Tom. You never loved me – did you, Tom, or were you
just so hateful that dear Harry had a girl's affections so
soon, too – and I cannot bear your bitterness if you did not love me.
In spite of the quiet, sombering knowledge that you are dead,
please take care to write back soon. I will wait for you,
in my pleasant room that I rent on 4 Foresby Lane,
with my quill in hand, but Tom:
please don't make me love you.
Sincerely,
Ginny.
