Love Letter

Participants:

f_logan_icon.gif

Scene Title Love Letter
Synopsis Logan writes one.
Date April 5, 2019

Delaware Correctional Facility for Evolved


Dear Bijou,

Don't you remember what it was like between us?

He'd been rehearsing this letter a long time before he was ever given a pen and paper, and now it comes out fragmented, stilted, awkward. Logan is not a writer. He's a good talker, even now he's a good talker. It's easier when there are eyes to meet, hands to hold, a tone of voice to manipulate around words that might have been inadequate.

There is so much time spent here doing nothing. The boredom is what may kill me, in the end, boredom without the hope of ever seeing you again. To know there is nothing outside of this place for me if I ever left

He stops writing and sets down the pen.

Words reduce him to nothing. A flimsy piece of paper that can be tossed aside, words that can be read with invented inflection, ink that can be smeared. But it's all he has. For a moment, Logan just rests a flat palm on the wooden surface of the desk, pen trapped between the two surfaces, and rubs his right eye with his other hand, fingers slipping beneath his frameless reading glasses to cure the itch.

He's reasonably sure it's late afternoon, and he opted out of recreational time to stay behind and write his letter. They're allowed one a week. Logan doesn't often use this privilege, but a man from two cells down read them all his letter to his wife, and he had wanted that.

He wanted to write a love letter. He picks up the pen again.

is what will kill me. What we shared could not have all been about money, about abuse and using, and I know that you were among the many voices that put me in here but I wanted you to know that I don't hate you for it. Perhaps you were right to do this to me.

I've learned my lesson.

The letters are heavily censored, and to be so, officials have to read them, don't they? Maybe they'll read his and see that he's sorry and let him go, or perhaps move him to minimum security, or let him have visitors that go beyond psychiatrists and voices in the shadows.

Logan looks over his shoulder to the corner of his cell, where it's most dark, the idea striking a cold and terrified chord in him for a moment before fading again. It's quiet, in here, and he resumes filling the silence with the gentle scratch of pen against paper.

You were different from all the others. We understood one another. Don't you remember what it was like, when we were together? Didn't you feel good?

The penny-sized negation injection mark on his neck is a constant itch, and Logan pauses then to scratch it with the end of his pen, reading what he's written so far. There's plea in it, he knows, but that can't be helped. It is a plea. Love is a plea, isn't it? He certainly hopes so.

I think you miss me, you must do, and I miss you too. Come visit me. Come remind me there is more

He stops, again, because he realises that the blurring of the pages is not the ink somehow smearing itself upon its own will, but his eyes watering. The pen falls with a clatter and then followed by another as he pulls his glasses off and lets them fall, too, long fingered hands coming to rub over his face as he tries to keep it inside. He's not crying for Bebe, or even for their shared history. Just himself. Just to what he's been reduced too.

The chair creaks a little as he leans back and chokes to keep the tears back, breathing hitching over itself in small stops and starts. These breaks in the dam aren't so perculiar. Every now and then it hits him and then it passes again, giving way to a sort of detached serenity, before the feelings become raw once more, giving way to intense self-pity.

It goes on for sometime, before Logan finds himself wiping away tears, making a slight "oh…" sound as if only just realising what had happened, how silly for him to start crying, what could there possibly be to cry about, honestly…

He was writing a letter. With a final sniff, he picks up the pen and finishes it.

to life than loneliness. Perhaps we can resolve some things. I can give my apology in person.

Love, John Logan

The page is folded, almost reverently, fingers tracing the creases in very much a loving way, as if trying to infuse the page with sincerity. The symphony is over, the words written, both practiced lines and improvised ones. Perhaps they'll move her to tears, or at the very least, make her heart twinge in something even resembling what he feels if not for her, than for himself.

Then, Logan picks up a second page, smooths it out, and begins again.

Dear Yvonne,

Don't you remember what it was like between us?

One has to stick. Eventually.


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