LETTER TO MY SISTER IN OUTER SPACETIME

TO ANNIE WHEREVER WHOEVER YOU ARE NOW

When I arrived at Via Ortigara last week I put my hands on the sealed wooden box in which your body had been lying since Saturday the fifteenth of October when you left this planet.

I put my face against the pale brown coffin but no words or signals came up into my ears. There was only the heaving of my breath facing the reality of your departure.

Now the fire you requested has reduced your shape to ashes, the Annie crumbs sit in an urn waiting to be dispersed into the Atlantic ocean, as you demanded years ago when death was not even a flicker on the horizon.

We were so different you and I but both of us are rebels. Not because we want to break the rules but because we don’t believe they apply to us. I’m sure you told the gatekeepers of Wherever that you don’t need a password. Of course they let you in. Of course.

We had different kinds of anger you and I, different passions. The sandpaper wall between us could be painful sometimes and until I finish this letter I’ll still be angry with you for not waking me up on the morning Mom died. So I couldn’t hold her hand when she took her last breath.

I was asleep on the sofa in the living room, you were sitting beside her in the bedroom. You woke me only when she was already gone. I asked, enraged, why didn’t you call me sooner? You said: You were so tired, I wanted to let you sleep.

I wasn’t holding your hand either when you last breathed in but you are with me forever. Ti voglio tanto bene,je t'aime. Bon voyage my dearest nomad.

How and where to send this letter? I’m sending it electronically, in public and I’ve turned WIFI on because maybe cyberwaves have access to your present location.

Natou