dearest virgil,

how are you, my consummate friend? now that we are in the same state again for the first time in years, it feels as though we couldn't be further apart. have you managed to escape your hell? i fear i have only managed to postpone my own.

perhaps you wonder what advances my life, what propels me forward, as i do you. perhaps we spend more time imagining conversations with each other than actually having them. perhaps you hear my thoughts, and we needn't waste our breath with frivolous talk. perhaps you know; perhaps you've always known.

our traumatized brains have superpowers, or so i've been told.

perhaps extrasensory perception is one of them.

did you know lawrence, my grandfather on my mother's side? the violent racist i spoke of before. the owner of the homemade "beatin' stick," and one responsible for tearing my mother and her sisters apart (or so i thought). did you ever meet the man i hated the most? no, you couldn't have. we met a summer or two after he died, if memory serves.

i always thought he had abused my mother.

"your grandpa was abusive, and he drove my sisters and me apart," was all she would say whenever i asked why we never visited my aunts.

turns out, this wasn't the case.

what i thought was a colossal feat of forgiveness and compassion on her part for keeping him in her life was actually a colossal oversight.

he abused her sisters. not my mother. she managed to escape with what seemed to be mild emotional wounds. when her sisters left, they begged my mother to see things their way. to leave my grandfather. to reject him and my grandmother, the woman who had protected him and not them.

my mother did not.

she maintained her relationship with my grandfather,

and her children suffered for it.

i don't remember much about my grandfather.

i remember being terrified of him. i remember feeling hatred toward him. i remember panicking when i was left alone with him. i remember feeling relief and happiness when he died.

i remember my grandfather babysitting me one night. my parents were at one of my brother's baseball games, and they left me with lawrence. grandmother had just died, and he had been lonely living in florida without us, so he moved to be closer and ended up living in his mobile home in our backyard. this particular night, i recall that i stood at the kitchen sink doing dishes, watching my grandfather's reflection in the window overlooking the darkening yard and sky. he sat at the dining room table behind me, staring at my back.

"you look just like your grandmother right now."

he cooed as he began shifting his weight, as if to stand. i don't remember the rest, dear virgil, and as you may well know, that is uncommon for my memory. to hold onto so little so very vividly? strange for me.

grandfather moved off the property not long after that. the result of my father's ultimatum to my mother.

"kick lawrence out, or i take the kids and leave."

high stakes to deal with a man who was only "mean."

revelations, dear virgil, revelations.

suffice it to say, the mind reels at

how life can still manage to surprise, even at the ripe age of thirty-five.

thank you, old friend. whether you hear me or not, i feel better now.

forever yours,

dante