mary,
I cannot honestly be expected to take this seriously. Too old to be called Rose! You're lucky Oscar has impeccable manners because he very much wanted to follow my example and laugh in your face. I could tell.
O! for yonder, fonder times when you didn't take yourself so seriously. Cast your mind back, if you will, to the occasion of our first meeting. Blearily I opened sleep clagged eyes, throwing off the mantle of unconsciousness to behold a countenance passing strange and hideously ugly! A face more like the exact copy of mine own. Thinking I was still entwined in Dream's false fancies, I reached out one hand to touch the mirror image. It did not draw away and thus the questing digits were near entrapped in the phantom's nostril. And did thou quoth: "I am too old to have fingers stuck up my nose"? Nay! You giggled so hard you almost fell off the bed.
So be warned Rose…mary; I know you, inside out, through and through. And I won't stand for any of your nonsense, no matter how old you get or how young I remain.
Yours unpretentiously,
Rose
Dear Rosemary,
No, don't worry – it's nothing.
Yours inanely,
Rose
Dear Rosemary,
I shouldn't be jealous. I've had enough time to prepare. It's not as though it was a sudden, lost in the moment situation. There have been a lot of absent moments slowly building up.
And don't think you've been indiscreet. You've both been very good about it. But burgeoning attraction has many problems, not the least of which that it makes you sound like cultivated foodstuffs. I like that word. Foodstuffs – it's so vague and yet it's pomposity makes one believe that it is a very definite article, for fear of not seeing the Emperor's new clothes. I understood that, don't worry.
I count five broken branches and one disrupted bird's nest; that'll teach me to beat about bushes.
The scene: One lovelorn ridiculous adolescent huddles on the staircase, barely attempting to stay hidden as she spies on the couple before the fire rapt in mutual absorption. O dry words, such dull decrepit things. Or perhaps they seem so because I viewed the scene through a veil of tears.
Being heart-broken makes me quite poetic. I should do it more often.
I've run outside and hidden. Childish maybe, but I am what I am. I am what you aren't; you are what I want to be, if it means that Osc
I promised myself I wouldn't do this. I was going to act normally as if nothing were different though everything had changed. I have got to stop polarising; it's not particularly interesting to read.
Did I treasure some small hope? Of course; I'm human. And there are moments, when you're away baking or doing your hair or something, and we'll be sitting at the dining room table playing one of our games and he'll smile at me, and I'll think
I can't be jealous. It's absurd; you're my, you know, whatever you are. And you and he make a lovely couple. There I said it. Oscar and Rosemary, Rosemary and Oscar, the couple. Very lovely. It's too bad there is no one else here to witness how very, very lovely it all is.
Later, I'm never sure of the time but it is dark, still drizzling. The candlelight catches on the ivy outside my window, filigreeing its edges with liquid gold. The pages of this book are stiff but smooth and a pale, creamy yellow. The black ink from my pen glistens for five counts before drying and feathers only slightly as it is absorbed into the paper.
Two broken branches, a dozen bruised flowers and a nasty scratch on my right elbow.
Rosemary, there's something
I want
There once upon a time was a girl called Rose who once upon another time was a princess and a awfully silly one at that. Upon this particular time she was once again being silly (despite hoping perhaps she had learnt something since then) and had run outside to hide in her garden because the two people she loved most in all the world loved each other, which you'll agree is a very silly reason for the girl called Rose to cry her heart out. But she did so anyway as she ran to her favourite spot in the garden; a small stone bench next to the lily pond. The lily pond was looking particularly lovely that afternoon, swathed in a pall of rain. The lilies were blooming thick and white and smug as they always did, and the willow was bending its long limbs to sip the cool, green water of the pond and scattering its leafy debris all over the wooden bridge which the girl called Rose realised she would have to sweep again and soon, probably tomorrow. How long the girl called Rose stayed on the small stone bench – scribbling away dolorously in a dark blue book – she had no way of knowing. Long enough at any rate for one of the people she loved most in all the world to come looking for her.
"Wherefore art thou, Rose?" he called.
"'Wherefore' means 'why' not 'where', and well you know it so stop being silly, Oscar," replied Rose moistly (for though her tears had stopped the girl still felt distinctly water-logged).
"Now that I could never do, even for you, sweet wee Rose."
"Don't call me that," Rose scowled; her worst scowl which made her eyes disappear into mean little slits and her cheeks bulge unattractively, so she'd been told.
"Until this very moment I would have said there was not a thing in the world I would not do should you ask, sweet wee Rose, but this evening you have an uncanny knack for finding those oddities which I never shall cease. And I was using 'wherefore' correctly because I was asking, wherefore art thou in the garden getting soaked and letting your dinner grow stone-cold? Wherefore art thou crying, Rose?"
"I'm not."
"Wherefore wast thou, then."
Rose stared stubbornly at the lily pond and after a long excruciating silence finally, begrudgingly stuttered, "Nothing. I mean– I sh– well, it's silly anyway!"
"Ah..." he said in that infuriatingly enlightened tone which Rose had long since realised did not mean that he had derived any special insight from one's words, merely that he was giving the appearance of having done so; so as to draw one's innermost secret out of one's mouth before one could very well stop oneself.
Thus knowing, Rose continued to regard the lily pond with unwarranted interest. Even when one of her hands was picked up off her lap and held gently.
"We did not mean to hurt you."
"Don't be silly." She was proud to note that her voice held not a single trace of emotion other than confident assurance, and definitely not hurt.
And there was another very long silence, not nearly as terrible as the first, in which the girl called Rose and one of the people she loved most in all the world just sat on the small stone bench overlooking the lilies and the willow tree slowly turning colours while the rain began to ease.
I finally turned to look at him and said straight-out, "Do you love her? I mean, really love her?" and he said very simply, "Yes". And what my face looked like then I have no idea but after watching me a few moments he said yes again, as if answering another question. Then he stood, and pulled me to my feet, and said we had better get back because dinner really was on the table and growing cold.
I'm confused, Rosemary. But not unhappy. I think.
Yours,
Rose