Paul, published

I wondered if ever he was tired of waiting for someone to talk to him first. Because he always waited. In the hallway walking toward him he would not smile nor wave nor say hi unless you did first. I remember in class he never asked questions and never answered them. When I met him after college, he was reading the book I was looking for. It was called Jane Eyre, which went out of print and there remained only a handful of copies left. It was a rare luxury to have such a book in your possession.

            He told me about his dreams every night after we married. They were all strange and ethereal to me. I became jealous of him whenever in those few words he told me how real everything appeared inside his eyes. As if nothing was real inside this world. Listening to him always made me want to go to bed, to see if something happened inside my own eyes. But I am a dreamless insomniac and in those sleepless nights I wrote him letters. Letters about what I would like to dream about and whether he is still waiting.

            Dear Paul,

            It is raining outside and I can hear the raindrops quietly drumming the ceiling. They make me think of your dreams, how the rain came through and you stood in this room, holding my umbrella. How all the books on our shelves dripped of black liquid because the rain was washing away the ink. Except Jane Eyre, you said. 

            I wish I could dream about you, to understand the parts of you that I fail to understand now and before. To find out why you often sing and only sometimes talk.

            And at the end of every letter I would write, Until when will you wait? Then I would quietly place it on the piano next to his dense sheets of music. We never talked about the letters, but I knew he read them and kept them somewhere.

            Behind or beneath, he avoids to tell me something. I know he has a remarkably good memory that sometimes scares me. He remembers every meticulous detail--the scar under your lip, the flat F#. I imagine it must be immensely difficult to live a life like that. To carry with you the memories and dreams and times you hardly speak of. What are you waiting for. 

            I loved reading Jane Eyre with him, loved him because he did not mind the silences when we chewed our food. He loved to be hugged and was always hungry. And in that way, he was still a child. He used rare words like “beautiful” and “quaint” when he spoke. No one talked like that anymore. I loved searching the house for the places he kept my letters, playing hide-and-seek by myself. I loved that he whisper-sung in my ear when I couldn’t fall asleep. I loved him because I did not want him to wait. To love him was to keep him from waiting. 

To love him was to keep him. 

11:55 PM David: its like, a story written from inside me
Paul was inspired by David. His constant waiting, tacit demeanor, unusual dreams, keen memory, the piano. But this is only the character. The characterization of Paul was inspired by someone else. Save that he read the classics, the details are from Jack. The easy opulence of having books on his shelf, the natural sensitivity of being pitch perfect, the pauses when we would eat together. Jack is the best person that happened in my life; David, the best character-like person in real life. Subsequently when a writer applies these two people in her short story to create a character, Paul becomes perfect, organic.