Laertes,
There’s a willow in the wood. Dafty, you say, ‘course there’s willows in the wood. But this one’s different. This one’s tall, like a great, wrinkled man, like an old man, old as the savage sky, but he’s not afraid of what the other trees say about him. They whisper and they shake at him, but he grows tall and gentle.
No, that wasn’t a diversion. That has lots to do with what I’m to say. Willow, willow, willow wonder, through the thunder, going under, torn asunder…Ha! That rhymes, that.
Wait. Don’t go. I miss you, dear, dear brother. I wonder when you’re to return from Rome. No…Portugal? I didn’t forget. I’m just diverting. France. That’s where you are.
Mess! It’s all a mess! I won’t tell you. Not until you return. It’s bile at my feet, entrails on the tabletop, sickness in the brain. I am being crude. Forgive me. That was very crude. But this bitty city is terribly gritty…see, I’ve grown witty. Lord, have pity.
Why do I write? Besides the willow in the wood. To give advice, sweet brother. To hold your hand through the page, to hear your voice against the ink. Mad, that. Hear a voice, against ink? Ink is dead, just like our father. But I’ve given it away.
My proposal, my tidings — to get away. Further than France. France is too close; I can almost smell it. Go to Moorish lands, to salt and wind and spotted fish, to sea and sail and blustering gale. Don’t come back. Don’t think of me. This place is too rotten. I have festered along with it.
But the willow — ah, I have that.
— Ophelia
© 2016 Stellular Scribe
Stellular Scribe 