Dear friend,

The other day I thought of you, probably for the first time in years. I was afraid for a moment. It was around the time I was waiting at a cross walk, and I found myself looking around, afraid they'd come. But I guess it's been so long they've sort of forgotten to care about me.

I have a job now, and it has nothing to do with computers. I wanted to be a doctor honestly, I thought that would have been a good route to go. But the farthest I was allowed to go was watch the morgue. Not that I could have paid for medical school anyway. I don't examine the bodies or anything, but I sit there and make sure the people are safe, that they don't leave, and no one comes to take them away. I sit in the dim light and read some newspapers most of the time.

For a while I took up poetry. My mom was a poet, she was sick most of her life and wrote most of her poems in bed. I don't think she ever published or anything like that, but dad seemed to enjoy them. But I'm afraid I lacked in poetry what I lacked in music ultimately, rhythm. I still do it anyway, not that I let anyone see it. Maybe when I die I can have them given out to strangers, who knows maybe someone will like it.

I found a song the other day that used to be in a music box I had. The song sounded slow and sad to me but my mother insisted it was happy. I found the words to that song, it was sad. A girl left a boy, and he was sad.

They gave me a therapist. I go and see her everyday before work, cause I watch the morgue at night. Sometimes she'll come over to my apartment, we'll have some food. I don't know why I need a therapist but they're making me see her. Sometimes I don't really have anything to talk about, so I muse about some dream I had or something. She always seems intent on listening to me, but I'm afraid that's because it's her job and that I'm not as interesting as she makes it seem. She's quite nice actually now that I think about it. She's old and she shows me pictures of her granddaughter, adopted you know. She's black and her granddaughter's Indian, what a world we live in now huh? It's a great thing I think. After all Mom was Hawaiian and Dad was about the shade of paper.

I don't know, I never felt that different from anybody. I had some Asian in my eyes and an unconditional love of steamed rice. What made me different from everyone else was not what I looked like but how I felt. I guess it was a stupid teenaged faze that just lasted up into my adulthood.

Sometimes the guys in suits come by and talk to me.

I don't know what I did to deserve such excellent treatment, and by excellent I mean horrible and lacking the idea of personal space. Sometimes I get the feeling there's cameras in my apartment. I'll get into this weird mindset where I literally check everything in my one room home. I don't know I always was suspicious of those above, since Dad left after Mom went away. It may sound ridiculous to you, if I recall you had a very level head, but still, there's nothing more scary to me than someone else being there. Watching me you know, it gives me the creeps.

I get the feeling sometimes that I'm being trained or something.

The strange feeling that as my life gets more and more methodic I'm some how being numbed. I get up, I have my oatmeal and Tastee Wheat, maybe PowerAde, the green one, it's my favorite color. I wait around and I go to my therapist then I go to work and then I sleep. It's like this each and every day. Do you ever get that feeling? It's…I don't know tiring.

Do you ever just stand in the middle of the street and look up at the sky? Do you wonder what it'd be like to fly?

No of course not. That's not really your thing. But you're so high up, higher up than me. I forget actually, I'm sorry. I haven't thought of you in such a long time, I've forgotten. I'm so sure you told me once when we were closer, of your childhood, of how you came to be so high, I'm sure you did but I can't recall it. Did you have as hard a time as mean in all this? It must be easier up there, you must have an apartment four times as big as mine, a home, a house, a working heating system. You must have the time to date and don't need a therapist. The methodic life has led you to success, but not me.

But do you remember, do you remember how hard it was? Did you ever look to the sky and want to fly away from it all?

My therapist, the woman with the Indian girl, she tells me my mind wanders. I guess that's true my focus can very much vary, I just get bored so easily often times. It's true. I can stand on a street corner for the rest of my life, recalling something that never happened. I can stand on that corner and look up at the sky and I swear to you, I can feel the wind on my face. I can feel my hair helplessly whip around. I can feel the wind spread through my shirt collar onto my chest and back. I can hear the utter silence from so high above this chaos.

I should try sky diving.

Even then, you have all that gear on, it can't be the same. No, I'd fly like Superman does. I don't want wings, one they're too big to walk around normally, and you'd exert yourself flapping so much. No, fly like Superman, just get up and fly with seemingly nothing propelling you. Simply defy gravity.

I've been going to Church each Sunday, for no good reason actually. I don't know man, about God and everything. I just can't imagine. But I go anyway out of some impulse. I find it fascinating that all these people come willingly more than I go for myself. Someday I want to go to Europe to see the big Cathedrals. The Houses Of God that actually appear to be his house. St. Paul I hear is huge, these monoliths of God. It's all just amazing I think, religion. How people go so far into it. I can't imagine believing in something so greatly, I don't think I've ever believed in anything like that. I don't think I could fight with my life for something I believed in.

I guess I'm selfish and cowardly. I don't think you're like that, I think you're braver than I, I can't recall. But when I thought of you, I saw a man I'd be afraid of, an intimidating man.

I wish I had an iPod, you probably have one. I bet you really like music. No one would guess but I bet you have a stereo system playing Moby or something. That's okay, nothing wrong with Moby.

I feel so unfulfilled. I feel so lonely and empty. I hope you get this letter and I hope you write back as quickly as you can. Not to sound desperate but lately I've become increasingly unsatisfied with everything. Like I knew something more but I've forgotten. Do you get that feeling? Like you've forgotten something extremely important? It's a horrible feeling, a sense of terror comes over you, I can hardly describe it. Perhaps we can meet, we can go have noodles or a coffee. I recall being close to you.

The thing is I'm having trouble making friends. I always had trouble but this time it's particularly hard. Ever since the coma I've been on a different wavelength than anyone else. I can't seem to find anyone willing to sit down with me. Like everyone has an instinct to somehow avoid me. Maybe I'm just being dramatic.

I thought of you the other day and a great warmness came upon me. I felt good remembering something. You know, the whole brain injury, it messes you up. They tell me how I was before, I can remember some of it too, my parents, my mother and stuff. School and friends. It was the recent stuff they said that would go away and it has. But I felt very good in remembering you, and I hope we were good enough friends that you'd be inclined to meet with me, and actually happy I'm alive.

Sometimes I have dreams. I hear your voice, maybe you visited once or twice while I was out away in that coma. They say you can hear stuff when you're in a coma. No, I'm just hearing echoes now. But I hear your voice and I guess it could be a memory too. But I dream of a girl too. We were close weren't we, did I have a girlfriend when I went out? I'd like to meet up with her again, just to catch up. I bet she moved on though, she struck me as a strong woman. A warrior woman, my warrior woman. She's probably out in the suburbs, with a husband and a kid. A working mother and still a good mother. I bet she's somewhere else happy, wondering only occasionally about the guy she knew that was me.

I thought of you and fear they'd come for me. It's irrational but still, I was afraid. I don't know why really. Weird huh. I guess I was important, important enough to be watched by men in suits. Maybe I did something bad to get into that coma, it's not easy to get into comas you know, you gotta do something big. I'm good with computers, they took away my computers. They took away my computers.

So sit in the morgue and I do my poetry and I tell my therapist and I go to sleep and dream. We should see each other again. We should go out and get some food. If you're not busy. Men in suits like you are usually busy.

It's raining outside, please excuse the water marks, my roof is leaky.

How are you?

Yours truthfully, Thomas.