Dear V,
I want to kill myself today, so I thought of you. Nobody else would want to hear that. Lord knows no one would really listen. And by no one I mean ——, of course. I thought I wanted to write something, just for the fun of it, but then I thought, “What’s the point of writing something if —— won’t read it?” Which really means, “Why can’t I impress him?” Which really means, “I’ve never made anything he’s ever wanted to frame on a wall or tell his friends about, so what’s the point?” I know there doesn’t have to be a point, V, but I’m rather tired of there being none. I don’t want just anyone to read what I write. I want him to. Not particularly because he’s well-versed or would help me in my creative prowess, but because if he did then he cares enough to, and lately it’s been feeling like I can’t live off the little love he gives me. I feel like I’m suffocating, V. Gasping for air. And yes, I do tell him. Of course I do, but he doesn’t know what to do. Or how to love me. He’s turning thirty this year but he’s very much still a boy. Some days I think about doing him the favor of leaving, of killing myself, because if I died I know he’d grow up. I can never have the —— I need. Isn’t that sad, V? He has to lose me and feel the loss of it before he can even begin to start deserving me. It is the case with a lot of boys marrying girls who’ve become women in the meantime. He neglects her. For school or money or some other thing more important. I try not to take the things he says (or doesn’t say, I find such pain in all his silences) too seriously. But you know me, V. You know me better than anyone.
I just thought of a story just now. Isn’t that marvellous? I’ll never write it, it’s far too stuffy and autobiographical, and I’m afraid people will catch on and misinterpret it. The story would take place just as a girl dies. Commits suicide. A lonely girl, just like the rest of them, except this one actually did something about it. The girl has a friend — or somebody who knew her name and decided that was enough. Anyway, this friend would find this box of letters. Or perhaps they’re scattered all over different places connected to the girl, like tucked in bookshelves or underneath her bedroom floorboards. It doesn’t matter. The letters are found, in one way or another, and the friend reads them and finds that they’re all addressed to the same person — a person named V. And this supposed, would-be friend, on a mission fueled by an intangible grief even they don’t understand, tries to find out who this V is. Of course they do. They start with everyone whose name starts with “V” in the girl’s now-gone life: Victoria. Vivian. Vincent. But none of these people know what this friend is talking about, nor have any of them seen these tragic letters. (The letters, by the way, are just a very convoluted way to say goodbye; for, essentially, they’re all suicide notes, at their core, because the girl only wrote them when she was feeling particularly at fault for everything that was wrong and is wrong and will be wrong. She was stupid like that). Those were the letters. And nobody had ever read them. And this friend — the friend who found them — eventually realizes it’s true. That nobody has ever laid eyes on these chronicled farewells. “V” was a nobody. The girl was writing to an absolute nobody and she killed herself from the sadness of it all.
Yes, that’s the story idea I just had. It’s sad, isn’t it, V? I know you think so and you’re looking at me with those eyes I’d hate on anybody else but you. Oh, how I love you. I love you and you love me too.
——, August 23
Eunice-Grace Domingo has a BA in Honors English and an MA in English Literature from the University of Saskatchewan. She has been a recipient of the Peter T. Millard Award for queer literary research, as well as the Avie Bennett Prize for Canadian Literature, the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Scholarship in English, and the Hantelman Humanities Scholarship. Her graduate research has been accepted into several annual conferences, such as the Heart and Souls Conference and the British Graduate Shakespeare Conference. Her poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals including The New York Literary Magazine, Moon Tide Press, In Medias Res, Dream Creative Writing, The Taj Mahal Press, and The Lamp. She was born in Manila, Philippines and immigrated to Canada in 2007 with her family.
Modern Flash Fiction 