Deliver to Henry

Dear Henry, I believe I have understood her.

You've only heard about her once or twice, I have always been most protective about my feelings and thoughts of her and even her only being. You possibly don't even know her favourite colour - telling someone else's favourite colour is already exposing your thoughts of them. But you've known she's a riddle. A riddle is possibly all you know of her, and all do I. Always feeling the greater disposition for falling in love with her never told me why I felt this, nor what she meant to me, nor what she was. Never have I encountered so peculiar, calling and challenging a soul. She's trully a riddle. If Wilde could only see her..! I'm sure he'd say she's the sphinx's secret itself, for she is.

I was always under the risk of falling in love with her, as I have already stated, but never did so. I still can and may, but I simply won't. If she'd ask me - and as you know me, I feel strongly invited to tell her all of this, for you know I'm always dazzled by and curious about what the truth might bring out - I'd say it was always a matter of choice and never a matter of choice, for it is exactly this. You yourself wouldn't understand or be able to grab her soul, my dearest, and I am very aware of how clever and astute you are. But I was thinking just now of my distress and erosion with her and suddenly realized what it is that she causes.

She is purely and simply an opportunity for an obsession. Knowing this, all is explained. For I, despite my strong wills to do so, never had an obsession. And who doesn't want or need one? Now, I know, Henry, that you've known my episodes of alcohol and gambling, but they were never an obsession: they were only and simply, for a time, my very only friends. But she is so clearly a fall, a downright fall, she could never be more attractive and nothing could be more attractive than her. She has no idea of that, of course, but she's so peculiar a case I believe even if she did she would still be a fantastic disease. Even she is unable to spoil and dominate such lovable danger.

So that's what she is. She's an obsession. Obsession IS her. It's even awkward we don't notice it from the start - she's fabulously a black dame, a black hole, a sin, she's alcohol and cigarettes, she's a drug, she's so completely a drug and she will eventually kill you. Even if she loves you back. That's just her.

She suffers too. She never finds peace, never will and does not seek it. And she'll die being just that, just this. If there's a God, she'll die coming, and still she'll be unhappy. She'll be blasé, as if looking to a camera, as if being a movie star, as if playing a role, for she plays, she is a role and she is not. She's the Cinema; you'd understand.

I'll die, Henry. Tomorrow or the day after that. This is not a probability. I'm glad.

Yours,