Day Two hundred and twenty eight - Francesca

And I would give anything to change all this. I would. I would. But the numbers do not, unfortunately, lie. For these past many years I have been doing all the math I could muster, all the calculations, running all the numbers. My problem here is that there are too many variables. An infinite number of them, or so it seems. No matter how much I adapt my figures, no matter the projections I manage to come up with, there just seems to be no way for me to change what was into what should be. No matter how much I exert my mind thinking of what to change, and when to change, nothing seems to translate into a viable reality. In every other instance, every other instance that differs from my prime reality, the one where there came that calling that moved me to Sofia, and then moved us to Forever, it seems that I either coloured my stomach yellow, and walked away from what should have been my greatest of joys, or maybe it was her who did not call after me, or maybe on that day she read her book elsewhere, and maybe saw someone else reading, and that someone else became me, while never being me. Maybe it was me who, taking a left turn instead of a right, wound up going the longer way, and by the time I got there she was gone. I don't know. I don't know. I'll never know.

All I know is that I am one offense shy of final erasure. And now, with a sense of clarity that had been long absent, my final solution appears at last.

I know full well that my previous attempt to reach you turned out with disastrous results. One of my many errors in judgement was assuming I would be leaving no trace, that the energy expended could not be easily pinpointed to, and that was one of the mistakes I made, that ultimately led me here. But I also know one thing : we, as a society, this vast world over, have become overly dependant on technology, and so great were the strides taken into its perfection, that the analog has all but been forgotten. And so that is my weapon. I can't change my future, and nor can you, I can't change what never was, but maybe I can help you change what yet may be.

And so I write to you, pen on paper, and so I lay these lines so that you know, so that you know of what was, of what stopped being, of what will be, of what may never be. I strode these streets of mine, streets that I know you once walked yourself, and one day I found, etched in an aging bronze plaque fixed on the outside of a crumbling building, words that told of your living there in a certain year. At once I knew when to go. What to do. What to say.