Second movement: The Letter.

Can I talk? Can I speak?
And can I lay my head on you?
Can I choose and can I say
I love you?
Tilo Wolff

Hello Abbey:

I'm sure you don't recognize me. You don't know who I am, and maybe you don't even know that I exist. I don't think you remember me, but I surely remember you. I will always remember you. I will do so until the day of my death. I will always have you in my heart, because I love you. I do since the day I met you. It is a date that you remember, but maybe not for the same reasons as me.

It was a typical cold morning in Moscow Airport. I was a college student returning from a semester of interchange with the State University. I looked through the rest of people who were in that room and then your figure sprang between the coats and the luggage. I suppose that the thing that drew my attention the most was your white hair. I knew that you were someone special, because we humans don't have white hair and so much energy in our bodies at the same time.

Until that day I had only seen a few monsters, perhaps some vampires and werewolves in my school. Even though the distinct anti-discrimination organizations of the world are putting their efforts into joining monsters and humans together in favor of common good, they still have a lot to do.

When I joined the line to aboard the plane, I thought you were one of those unknown people that one only comes by once in a lifetime, so I decided to watch you occasionally to keep your memory. You were wearing a pair of white arctic boots, military styled gray pants, a long coat of white wool and a gray ushanka over your head. Your blue hands were sheathed in fingerless gloves and were leaning out under the sleeves, holding a notecase with a passport and a large blue suitcase.

In an instant, your eyes found the mine ones while they were searching for the assigned door. You started to walk towards me and I thrilled at the possibility of you being mad at me because of my gaze. When you joined the same line I was waiting at, just a few people behind me, I had a strange mixture of emotions: happiness, because you were going to take the same plane as me; fear, because I didn't know what to expect; and intrigue, because I never was so lucky.

Back then, at the age of 20, I had only been in love a couple of times with two girls who I never dared to talk to. But now, while I write these lines for you, I can undoubtedly tell that you're the only one I've loved.

You went out of my sight during the luggage checking process. I supposed you were going to travel in another class, so I resigned not to see you again and went to my seat. I was just going to put on the earphones of my music player when you appeared in the aircraft's door. You showed your ticket to the stewardess and she pointed towards the hallway. You walked between the seats and stopped just in front of the mine one. The luminous purple of your eyes perched over the numbers of the seats and your head moved confirming the information from your ticket.

When you lowered your gaze and placed it on me, I felt like I was again before the aurora borealis. Absorbed into the contemplation of your face, I didn't understand what you asked me until the second time you did. It was then when I stood up and politely granted you my place in the window, which was in fact yours.

When I sat down next to you I started to shiver. I didn't know really well if there were my nerves or the strange cold that emanated from the blue pendant that hanged from your neck. Apparently you noticed my discomfort, because you took it off and put it in your pocket, making the temperature of that place rise a little bit.

And despite of that gesture, your cold expression made me think, that maybe you were awkward because of how I saw you twenty minutes before in the waiting room. I decided to take my eyes away from you and hope for the trip not to be too long, so I didn't make you feel uncomfortable with my presence.

During the next hours, mi mind fell upon a storm of questions. Who were you? What kind of monster were you? Where did you come from? Where were you heading to? Which one could possibly be your name? And even more: why was I suddenly so interested in you? I didn't know it, but something was telling me that I was just about to find it out.

II

I imagined a thousand names for you: German, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and Swedish. You should have definitely been born somewhere in East Europe. Finally, I decided that you should've been Russian, judging by the way you talked to the flight attendant when she asked you about your preferences for the meal.

In the evening, during the sunset, your gaze escaped through the window and perched in some point between the sea and the sky. Fearing that you would discover me, I looked towards the porthole and joined instantaneously your eyes in their walk through the sundown. Never have I seen a jewel more gorgeous than the golden reflection of the sun on your sweet corneas.

That was the first time I contemplated your face carefully. Two purple-colored eyebrows like the petals of the rhododendron framed your eyes with a pair of symmetrically perfect logarithmic curves. The blood that ran under your skin tinted your cheeks and the tip of your nose with a light glacial purple. I looked at your lips and got surprised to find those two tiny fangs arising from beneath like the pistils of a violet flower.

I suppose you should have felt my gaze caressing your cheekbones, because in an instant you turned around and buried your eyes in me like an icicle falling from a tree. Astonished by the image of you and the sunset, I had no idea of your visual contact until a second later. I turned around my head to the other side, trying to escape from the avalanche of your eyes, and praying at the same time for another chance to see them.

The night fell, and with it the drowsiness. The flight attendants distributed the pillows and the lights of that room dimed. It only remained the slight humming of the pressurized air in the ducts of the ceiling. You covered yourself with your coat, leaned back your seat, and put yourself comfortable to try to get some sleep, looking away from me.

Gingerly, I looked again at you. You looked so peaceful while you were sleeping, that I couldn't help but think: How could someone call "monster" a creature as beautiful as you? I would never understand it. I contemplated your white hair falling through your back like a frozen waterfall. The orchid lock and the turquoise lock ran too, like a pair of light rivers through an ice prism. I saw the fine bluish skin of your hands and the similarity of its ink with that of the color of the northern glaciers really surprised me. The claws from your fingers made them look like a pair of snowflakes of complicated design. "Surely those hands could take care of my heart" I said to myself when I saw them.

Your body drew subtle curves from under your coat. If you were human, maybe you'd be in your teens, but I ignored so many things about you that I couldn't estimate your age only by looking at you. I took away my eyes from your undulations quickly. I feared that you could wake up and find me looking at you. I was afraid that you could discover the love flowing from my eyes. I would never have bad intentions with you, but I was afraid of your reactions.

It was then when I decided to become the guardian of your sleep from that night. While I watched over you, I discovered half of your ticket popping of one of your coat's pockets. And then, I started to think. I wanted to know your name. I needed to know at least that of you, but it was unlikely that I would be brave enough to ask you directly. Your cold presence intimidated me. In that moment, I knew that your name should have been written in your ticket, and that this was my last chance, because the next day we'd arrive to Portland and I would never get to see you again.

With a maneuver worthy of the best pickpocket and with an incredible boldness for my person, I took the ticket out of your pocket. You can't imagine the happiness I felt when I saw the two words written on the paper: "Abbey Bominable". Since that very moment your name came to me as the most beautiful of the world, the best combination of letters ever written in history. What a wonderful way of calling a person as gorgeous as it!

Since then I stopped thinking about you as a monster. You should be even more human that most of people I knew. A girl so precious should not be tagged that way.

As fast as I took it out, I got the ticket back to your pocket. I leaned against my seat and played for a moment with one of the white locks that were escaping from under your coat. I looked at you for a last time before going to sleep, like making sure that my eyes swallowed each photon that emanated from you. I wanted to retain you in my mind forever. I wanted to be with you in dreams that night and all of the next ones.

And then, like corresponding to my yearnings, a caprice of your dreams made you turn around to me searching for a more comfortable position for your rest. Until that moment, I had never been so close to a girl, so that made me startle. When I found your face in front of mine, and got haunted with the icy perfume of your breath, I could only be aware of one thing: my heart would be your slave for the rest of my days.

III

The next hours were of intermittent sleep. My body was tired of the trip, but I wanted to keep observing you, because I knew that not even in dreams would you be as beautiful as in person. When I closed my eyes I felt like swimming in the ocean of your skin, going deep down in your essence and searching for the path to your heart.

But I wouldn't reach it. In no moment of all those hours you showed interest in me. I wanted to talk to you; I wanted to hear your voice speaking to me; I wanted to see my eyes reflected in yours, I wanted to stop being just another passenger and become someone special, just the way you were now to me. I died many times that night. Every now and then I woke up, and when I looked at you, the boundaries between reality and dreams started to blur.

At morning, when the warm light of the sun started to leak through the windows, I found myself in front of your face. I contemplated it seizing the clarity of the sunrise and thought to myself: "How happy would I be if I could wake you up with a kiss! That would surely heal my old dysthymia."

And then, a miracle happened. Answering to the call of the sun that was emerging in the Atlantic horizon, your body throbbed slightly to shake off the doze of the night. Your eyes opened like two stars that appear over the firmament and blinked twice. I submerged in them as in a fresh water lens and I let myself get lost in their currents. A slight smile sprouted from your lips, and then I got paralyzed. My heart broke its ice prison in that very moment and told you "Good morning" in the kindest and warmest way it could. You answered almost the same way, and then it exploded in cheerfulness.

After that there were only small and simple conversations. In some way I managed to get the courage to speak to you, but due to my lack of social skills I couldn't do really much. I asked your name and you asked mine, but I'm sure you don't remember it, because you even had difficulties to pronounce it. Among other things I knew that you were Nepalese, you had lived in Russia for the last six years and now you were heading to the United States to attend a new school.

When you told me that you were going to live in Salem, my soul got enlightened in joy. I was a college student of the Oregon State University, in the second year of my career. I attended the campus of that city, so it was much probable that I could find you frequently by the town.

I couldn't get to know anything else about you. The communication between us seemed more like a session of questions and answers, rather than a casual conversation. And it was me the one that was making the questions, because your only doubt about me was my name. I supposed that you only asked for it by courtesy, or that you were as shy as me; perhaps even more.

Despite your gentleness when answering my questions, I didn't dare to ask you about the monster species to which you belonged. I was afraid you'd get upset. I feared that you wouldn't like to get tagged that way, or that I would make you feel awkward, so I remained in silence for the rest of the travel.

I wanted to know many more things about you. I wanted to know your tastes in music, art, movies, literature, gastronomy and everything that one day I could share with you. I wanted to know what was hidden beneath the snow and the ice.

I didn't have the fortune or the valor to request your phone number, e-mail address or social network page. Neither did I offer the mine ones to you, as not to look like a stalker.

When we got to the airport, I got out of the plane following the hoarfrost that fell from the cloud of your hair. We walked together to the luggage reception, took our baggage and said goodbye. "Bye!" said you while you walked towards the exit. "Bye" said I looking at you and feeling like it was forever "thank you" and you couldn't hear me anymore.

IV

When I got home that night, my heart was brimming of joy. My parents thought it was because I was back at home. And they were partially right, but they didn't know that it was you the one for whom I was so happy. My family got really surprised when they saw me in such a happiness state, because they were more used to my serious and reserved attitude. That day I kissed and hugged my mother like when I was a little kid. Perhaps it was because of it that she noticed the souvenir of feelings that I had brought.

That night I consecrated myself to music, dreams and your memories. Lulled by the notes of a piano, I let myself upon Morpheus's arms as if they were yours. I'd tell you what I saw that night during my sleep, but I had forgotten it as we all forget our dreams when we wake up. The only thing I'm sure about is that you were there. That day I dreamt again. I stopped having nights empty of pictures, nights in which I only slept. I stopped from having nightmares too, and I could sleep quiet. Because even when you're a monster and monsters inhabit nightmares, a dream with you could never be considered a bad dream.

In those first days of school, a doubt attacked me more than the questions of my teachers: what kind of monster were you? Which was your species? I decided that the best I could do was to investigate in the university's library. I checked all the shelves, red the spines of many books and made six searches in the electronic catalogue, but I didn't find anything about monsters. Perhaps an article about a mystical stone called "cryonite" in one of the hemerotec's science magazines. Finally, I got over my shyness and asked the librarian. She told me that if I was searching for information about monsters, the best place for it was the internet.

I followed her advice. I took one of the computers and after a few seconds it seemed like I found what I was looking for. I got to a site that held a catalogue of all of the world's monster species. I entered a few key words and got back a list of five species. I checked them one by one and got to the conclusion that you should have been Yeti, as all of your physiognomy was exactly the way it was described in the site's text: white hair, light blue skin, claws instead of nails, fangs protruding from the lower jaw, tall height and dense and developed muscles. It was only necessary to add "surreal beauty" to that list of attributes.

According to the document, you had a life cycle very similar to that of humans. We present the same life expectancy, so you and I could have perfectly had a normal couple life. In accordance with the site's data our species are genetically compatible, and there were also cases of successful pairings. But, how successful could possibly be our situation? Or better said my situation?

During the flight you showed relatively little interest in getting to know me. You didn't make any question about me, though you accepted to answer the ones I asked you. Your farewell seemed more like an act of courtesy than a real goodbye. Oh! I suppose you are another of those goddesses that only the shy and lone men fall in love with, those of us that are always hidden behind a book, a calculator or inside a lab. 'Cause you're a real goddess; a Yeti goddess of ice.

The semester kept going. The months went by and along with them my control over the situation. My feelings for you grew every day and I didn't know what to do with them. Unlike the rest of mortals I didn't have many social contacts from which I could get a solution. I didn't have a confident to vent my emotions. So, in the absence of a safety valve, the pressure started to build up inside me.

I saw you every day, at least in my head. I dreamt with you several nights a month and I even wrote down my dreams in a notebook. After that, I burned the sheets, 'cause they were nothing more than simple, empty illusions. I imagined you walking by the halls of the faculty with your books in hand and talking to your friends. I knew that maybe you were too young to attend the university, but I liked to see you there.

It could be said that you had become my addiction, but I didn't see it that way. Effectively, I spent many of my hours thinking about you, but I wouldn't rate my feelings as an obsession. Addictions and obsessions are bad. They're disorders of the mind that exponentially increase a need to the level of dependence. However, unlike these disorders, my love for you had brought many good things: my old dysthymia seemed to finally heal, my will to talk to people returned, I left a little bit aside my pessimistic view of the worlds, and even my notes started to get better. You should have definitely been the healing to my illnesses.

V

When the next semester started in February, I was resigning not to see you again. By then, the only friend I had already knew about my feelings for you. At first, he thought it was crazy, but as an exemplary university student, he respected me. I didn't tell him your name, for him not to look up for you. When he asked what I saw in you, I didn't answer anything, fearing that he would fall in love with you too. At the beginning, he insisted in getting to know your name, but when he understood that I didn't want to tell my secret, he stopped asking.

At the start of the semester I was sent to the city's public library as part of my hours of social service in the university. I love books almost as much as you, so that was one of the best places they could have sent me. And it was exactly in the library where I learned the curious weft of love's threads.

Certain day I was ordering some volumes from the physics area when, in some kind of reflex action, I sent my gaze to the entrance of the building. I stood still for a few seconds when I discovered your unmistakable blue silhouette standing in front of that door. An explosion of my heart made me react just as the book of quantum mechanics that I had in my hands was starting to escape. My cardiac organ turned into a fast competition engine at the same time a storm of electrons shook my brain and all of my body's muscles. I could not believe it. There you were again, standing in front of the entrance of that library, more or less at the same distance of the moment I saw you at Moscow airport.

You and your friend spoke with the librarian for a moment, and then she pointed towards the place where I was. That was my lucky day, 'cause I was the only assistant in the whole building. You two walked towards me and my nerves started to betray me. I tried to pretend I was busy with the books, so you couldn't notices the trembling in my legs.

You got closer, greeted me politely and explained to me that the reason of your visit was a school work. That was explained by your friend, who was obviously more talkative, but it was you the one I was looking at. Then you told me that you needed a guided tour through the library.

Your friend seemed to already know the place, because she didn't need my help to start the tour. I just limited myself to ask you to come with me. You were a little surprised when you heard that I called you for your name. I still can't understand why you didn't ask me how I knew it. I suppose that, given my not-so-threatening look of library mouse, you didn't give it more importance than that of a simple coincidence.

I walked next to you through the library talking about the books and the classification system we had. I tried to express myself in the most clearly way my nerves allowed me to, hoping that you would remember my voice and connect it with the memory of the "flight 576 Moscow-New York-Salem passenger". But for some reason you didn't remember me, so I resigned myself to start again as "the guy from the library".

I still remember the caress of your words in my ears when you made me questions about the books and their themes. I had fallen in love with your vibrant Russian accent too. I answered your doubts as clearly as possible, but they were only technical questions; nothing about me.

The tour ended and you and your friend went to one of the tables to write the report. I returned to my chore of ordering the books, not before remembering you two that I was there to help you with anything you'd need.

For the next twenty minutes I hid before the shelves and looked gingerly at you from behind the books. Your blue hand was making the pencil dance over the paper, and I imagined the mine one dancing with it. I was never really into dancing, but with you and for you I'd learn how to dance "The Blue Danube" from the beginning to the end.

And that way, my fantasies with Strauss's waltz consumed those twenty minutes. You and your friend the notebooks back in the backpacks and left. You both thanked the librarian for the attentions, but you forgot that it was me the one who had helped you the most. I don't blame you. Maybe you had so many things to do in school and in your house, that the hustle of the day had distracted you from saying goodbye to your assistant. When I say you walk away, I left the books aside and went to the door just to see you walk. I looked at you until you became a blue feather floating above the concrete horizon. You turned around in a corner and I felt you disappearing forever, again.

VI

After you left, I finished ordering the books as fast as I could and then went to the library's literature section. I wanted to find something that could give me a good conversation thread for the next time you came. And I also wanted something that could be a little bit suggesting, for your feminine intuition to get curious about my true intentions.

I rushed through the titles and stopped in one of the most romantic books I could have found in that place: the Rhymes from Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer. My faulty eyes devoured the first pages like two children to a candy bowl, trying desperately to find that poem that could be an arrow shot straight to your heart of ice.

When I finally managed to calm down a bit, I stopped in a little poem marked with the number XIII. The writing talked about a girl with blue pupils. Oh, soul of my soul! Even with the grandiloquence of those words, I don't think the eyes of that lady were like yours, but I must credit Bécquer for finding the perfect way to describe the noble beauty of your pupils. He's definitely right: your eyes are like the sea, like the violets, and like the evening sky.

I read some more poems and came to the conclusion that I could buy a copy of the Rhymes and give it to you as a present, telling you that all of them were dedicated from me to you. But, Alas! I don't know which day had the bliss of being the one in which you were born, nor with what kind of excuse you'd accept a gift from a stranger like me.

I continued checking the books of that shelf and found the Letter from an Unknown Woman of Stefan Zweig. I opened it with curiosity, read the first page and from there I couldn't stop. My love for you is exactly like the one from the unknown woman: hidden, dark, invisible, unconditional, somehow unhealthy, irrational, strong, cozy in some moments, lonely in some others, but definitively pure and disinterested. So disinterested that I don't care I don't exist for you. You exist for me and that's enough for me to be happy. Later that day, when I finished reading it, I felt the same shiver in my hands the protagonist felt after reading the letter.

In that very moment, a question exploded inside me: What if I ended the same way as the unknown woman? What if I was never anything more than "the passenger" or "the librarian" for you? What if I died without getting to know you, without you knowing my name? What if the only thing about me you ever get to know is just a bunch of hand written sheets?

From that moment, these questions turned into my demons. And today, while you read these lines, I'm living my worst nightmare. I'm dying. All of the horror has loosed over me and only you can set me free.

VII

It's been a year since I saw you for the first time. By this time, remembering you has become my favorite activity. I don't have photographs of you. The only images that I have of you are inside my mind. Sometimes I turn my eyes into movie projectors and display authentic love movies in the lonely white wall of my room. Through these films I live everything I'll never live with you in a place that doesn't exist, full of impossible feelings.

For months I thought that after your visit to the library, I'd never get to know anything about you ever again, but that changed a fresh evening of autumn. That day I came out of the faculty specially overwhelmed by the exams. I had too much things in my head, so I decided to take a walk to clear up my mind. I don't exactly know when did my feet started to take me towards the shopping mall. I went in and the complex was more or less full by that time.

I strolled through the halls and the stores for several minutes until I stopped in front of a coffee shop. I gazed over the tables for a moment thinking about entering and ordering something when I detected an unmistakable blue silhouette in a corner of the place. I couldn't believe it at first. I cleaned my glasses a couple of times until I could totally recognize you: there you were, surrounded by a group of friends that were speaking joyfully between them and with you.

I got away quickly and went out to the parking lot to get over the shock. I looked at my pocket watch and pondered the options I had: I could get away with just those few seconds of you, or I could stay and stalk you shyly from the bar. I wanted to see you because I didn't know when I would have the opportunity to see you again. I wanted to be with you, but your friends would surely have you well covered. If you discovered me I don't know what kind of problems I'd have with you, but at the end I didn't have too much to miss.

I entered the coffee shop like not wanting to do it and took the farthest table from which I could still see you. That left a barrier of more than ten meters and many tables to get me covered. My legs were trembling so hard I thought they were going to break the tiles of the floor like a pair of construction jackhammers. I ordered an espresso and took out my calculus book to try to hide myself behind the study of numbers.

For the next thirty five minutes I played hunter and prey with you. Yeah, sure, as if I had what it takes to make you feel stalked. I guess that, if you wanted, you'd surely scare the heck out of me with that pair of fangs that point out of your mouth. And it's not like they're disgusting to me, it's just that some part of me is afraid of what you could do with them. In fact, I love your little fangs. They look like a pair of mint candies just waiting for someone to take them for his own delight. You have no idea how many times I've thought how it would be to get a kiss spiced with them. It's surely better than I can imagine.

And I kept looking at you from behind the limits and the integrals. I could almost assure that you never felt my look, Abbey. I've always been a living phantom, a social ghost, so it's unusual for people to get aware of my presence. Teachers never remember my name, and my classmates always change it. It is relatively "normal" that you don't remember me, so it was very likely that in that moment I would have to try again as "the coffee shop's intellectual".

At some times I was lucky enough to intersect my visual vectors with yours ones, but it was more like me the one who was looking for the light of your eyes with the same desperation of a sailor searching for a star in a cloudy night. And when I saw them, they were exactly like that: two violet stars that jumped from cloud to cloud, from idea to idea.

The hunting finished. You and your girl friends paid the bill and said goodbye to the waitress, who seemed to know you well. I think one of them became aware of my game of looks, because she made a sign to you and you looked fleetingly to me. I got scared again with the idea of you being mad at me and felt at bay towards the possibility that you'd come to complain about it. I was never the kind of guy who girls would call "tiger", so I had no idea how I was going to face you if you came to me. For my luck, you simply downplayed it and continued to walk.

I saw you depart once again, but this time I didn't feel it was forever. With an extraordinary audacity for someone like me, just like when I took the ticket out of your coat to know your name, I asked the clerk about how frequently did you and your friends came to the place. She said that you came each Friday, more or less at the same hour after class.

From that day, each Friday of the semester I came back to that coffee shop with a different book. I came back to read you and the sky of your eyes.

VIII

Abbey, oh Abbey. My sweet and lovely Abbey. How much I enjoy writing your name! But I enjoy it even more when I get it between my lips just before pronouncing it. It's like a candy of different flavors that combined produce and incredible taste. I could take the letters of your name and form an anagram, but it wouldn't taste alike in my voice.

Dostoyevsky was right: "A moment of happiness is not enough for a whole life". It had barely elapsed three weeks since I found you for the first time in that coffee shop when I proved in first-person the truthfulness of that theory.

It was the same time as usual: early Friday evening after class. I was enjoying a cappuccino with differential equations when I saw you enter. In that very moment, one of my deepest fears about you appeared in front of me like a cold ghost in the middle of a winter forest. I got frozen in front of that vision. The water dissolved in my blood formed crystals that scrapped the walls of my veins as if someone had suddenly injected me a dose of crushed glass. My heart stopped and I couldn't do nothing more than just look.

There you were, with all the beauty of a narcissus in the snow, holding hands with a tall guy of pale skin, fire-lighter hair and a general aspect that made you think he had just parked his sport motorcycle in the outside. Just the picture of that revolved the glass of my veins: you two on a two-wheeled machine, you holding him to get over the dizziness of velocity. I don't know how I could endure the moment in which you two got into the coffee shop and took a seat at one of the tables.

He looked imposing, athletic, sociable, extroverted and talented. Well, everything I'm not and that girls like. He looked like a rock star. "Maybe he even knows how to play and has a band" thought I before another picture assaulted my mind: you enjoying the music of his group while he sang with the best hard rock style of Aerosmith. He seemed like one of those folks of adventure, sport and music that have really interesting lives.

You, in the other hand, were the same as ever. You kept your facet of serious, strong and formal girl, now combined with the one of teenage girlfriend. You definitely were happy at his side. I have not seen you smile like that since a long time ago, or more likely never, not even with your friend's best joke. It should have been because of him. Yes, it was definitely because of him. The way you looked at him, your expressions when you talked, the modulation of your voice and the rest of things you did where exactly like those from the teenage relationships. You were surely in love with him.

I would have given anything provided that you'd do that with me, or while you were thinking about me. Perhaps I would have even sold my soul, but surely no one would have taken it in the state it was in. It had more shreds that the clothes of a homeless and it was more worn-out that the soles of a runner's shoes, and it was just starting its twenties. I've treated it really bad since my mother departed to the place that no one comes back from. I had in my heart the hope that you could repair it, but now I could see how everything was being torn apart in front of my eyes.

And I died again. During one of those acid minutes that were falling from the industrial clock over the bar, you two started to get closer to each other in a movement that didn't predict anything else than the coup de grâce for the scraps of my dreams that were now lying in the floor of that place. You kissed him. I took my eyes away and didn't have the strength to even wish it was me and not him the one who was with you. I tried to hide behind a derivative, but I couldn't escape from the blow of your lips separating from his. That sound, half air and half flesh reached my ears and shattered my eardrums as if they were a pair of bubbles floating in the air.

I had lost you. No, I didn't really lose anything that day. One only loses the things that had before, but I never had you. And even if I had been in a relationship with you, I couldn't be sure of calling you "mine". Women aren't something one can call of his property. They're free beings that accept to be with you because they feel good in doing so, not because one has trapped them like birds in a golden cage. Even though, there are many foolish men out there who insist to do so. I hope he isn't one of them.

I couldn't stand a single minute more after that kiss, because that was followed by another one, and the love words of you two came to my ears through the tables like cannon blows from far away. I had confirmed another of my phobias. It had materialized before me in the shape of a guy with leather jacket and muscles. In that moment, I took the remains of my veins and put them in the backpack next to the fragments of my dreams. I paid the bill, lifted the carcass of my heart from the floor and left the place pressing down my eyes to avoid them getting melted.

IX

"There is no law in nature that says that theoretical physicians should be happy". I heard that quote in a TV program and immediately agreed with it. It's not true that we come to this world to be happy. No. We really come here to suffer.

You're gone, but in fact you're not. If it had been that way, then that would mean that in some moment of the past you were here, but you weren't. And that would have been better, because then I'd have memories from when I had you, and with them I could survive for the rest of my life.

But I don't. The memories I have of you are only a few days that look like photographs of a star taken with a telescope. That's what you are, Abbey: a blue star, shiny and distant, that can only be seen during certain nights.

How curious is love! Isn't it, my ice princess? One day it appears before us like an angel, gets us up and fill us up of energy. It makes us intrepid, astute and happy. But when its natural decaying process starts, it turns into a sour potion that befogs our senses and squeezes our hearts.

I didn't get to see you again since that day. I didn't want to. I tried to drown my sorrows in numbers and equations. I tried to go on with my life locked in a lab, but your ghost, the one I had created to be with me during the long school hours, had now become my punisher.

And as if that wasn't enough, my family got even smaller. I lost everything that remained from them, and now it's only me. My brother and my father were coming back home from a party when they were crashed by an imprudent trucker. The officer that called home after the accident told me that their bodies were found along with the car in the bottom of a cliff. I don't know how I could go to identify them at the morgue.

The only uncle I had here in the country was the one who helped me with the fees of the funeral. However, I wasn't present during the Honor Mass; I didn't participate in the religious rituals and hardly pronounced a single word in front of the graves.

After the funeral I locked myself up in my room. I had decided not to go to that party due to my depression. If I had done so, I'd surely had ended up like they did, but that wasn't the case. I'm still alive, but wanting to die. I think that the only thing that keeps me here it's you and the hope of seeing you alone again.

You're the only reason I'm still alive, but sometimes I feel I can't take it anymore. I had to look for a job to afford school, because my uncle is not much of a help. My aunt comes from time to time with my cousin to see how I'm going and make me some company. She has suggested me a visit to the psychologist, but I declined her offer thoroughly. Now I must live alone in this enormous house that I once called home. Only for you I'd call it that way again.

X

Freeze me up, Abbey. Freeze me up, please. I know you can do it. I know that all the yetis have cryokinesis skills. Freeze me up my love, freeze me up.

I've been dying in this hospital for more than ten days. Because of my depression, my immune defenses got low and I seemingly caught a strange mix of diseases. Each and every one of the Roman numerals that you've seen since the beginning of this letter has been a day that I've spent writing to you.

The day I started to write I was in such a grave state that I thought I would never get to see the light again, let alone that of your eyes. That day I asked for pen and paper and started to write down this letter as some sort of self-obituary. I want you to have at least this of me. I want you to remember me at least in some way, even if you don't know me. I want to be present in your life at least in the shape of a bunch of hand written sheets. If I made you sad with this, I hope someday you will forgive me.

I feel terrible. I feel I'm dying. I think I've heard the doctors say that this could probably be my last night. My body confirms it. I feel it falling apart. The worms eat out my entrails, dig out my brain and take away your memories forever.

I want to say goodbye to you. I want to thank you for choosing the seat number thirty five in that travel. Thank you for existing and liking coffee so much. Thank you for choosing my library to do your home work. And finally, thank you for the gift of your eyes and the light that they've unwittingly given to my life. Thank you for being who you are. If you had been a normal girl maybe I'd have not fell in love with you. I love you for what you are, for who you are and for how you are, and that's all that matters.

Thank you for raising my school grades, for showing me the shiny side of life, for teaching me that I'm not as unlucky as I think I am, and for demonstrating me that love exists. Thank you for everything Abbey, I'll never forget you. And even if you don't get to remember me, I hope that at least you remember this letter. I love you Abbey, don't you ever forget it.

And if I could, there's one last thing I'd like to request you: freeze me up. Freeze me up, Abbey. Take out all the heat of my body. Take away all of my energy, and along with it my soul and my pain. Hug me like the snow to the mountains and let me die in the cold of your lap. I want to pass away in your arms and not in the bed of this hospital. Freeze me up Abbey. Take me to the eternal rest in a bed of ice. Finish with my pain. Freeze me up… freeze me up… freeze me up…

Sorry for any misspelling, as English isn't my first language.