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Dear Louis,
I’m sorry it took so long to write to you. We’re safe. Well, as safe as we could be. The land around us is hard packed and orange and the dogs have already sniffed out any landmines.
Being safe is a kind of relative, confusing concept that gets twisted into a different shape every time you close your eyes. I used to feel safe with a gun in my hand, my finger stroking that trigger. But ever since Dale’s legs got blown off while he was running over a patch of innocent flowers, that doesn’t feel safe anymore.
Asleep was safe. Falling into that great divide between dead and alive where it didn’t matter which side you swayed…that was safe. Spending a few hours curled up in your arms or somewhere more beautiful than here was safe. But then we got news of airstrikes from a camp fifty miles away and we packed up and moved farther into the country but now I fall asleep and I’m afraid that the sky will fall in and, darling, there’s nothing I can do to protect myself against shooting stars.
God, I feel so selfish because I want to see you so bad, and the only way that would happen is if you showed up suddenly, like an apparition from Heaven in this desert. God, seeing you would be like a fresh drink of water, and I’ve been thirsty for so long but I’d rather dehydrate and shrivel up than watch you drown.
Love, Harry
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Dear Harry,
It’s good to hear you’re safe. I wish I could reach down and pick you from your tent and bring you back home and keep you outside the landing radius of shooting stars.
Home is a kind of relative, confusing concept. In the afternoon, when there’s gold slanting in through the windows and Riley’s feet are making that familiar rhythmic beat down the street from the bus stop, I’m home and it’s beautiful and Riley’s hair is long enough to pull into pigtails and I’m getting at better at learning your recipes like I’m getting better at sleeping at night.
After Riley gets tucked beneath her bedtime stories and empty promises that you’ll see her soon, I leave her room and I leave home. Your oven mitt is hanging at the wrong angle and the bathroom doesn’t smell like your aftershave in the morning. This bed feels miles wide and your pillow is so cold.
God, the whole house is cold.
I hope you’re warm wherever you are.
Love, Louis
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Dear Louis,
I have the picture of Riley that you sent me tucked inside my jacket pocket and I can feel it slowly making me bulletproof and covering a seal over my chest so I never have to go home to my little girl in a box.
I am carrying home around with me, now, and I wish you could do the same but I guess a house is just glass and wood and plaster and paint and home is your last name on my dog tags.
It was 110 degrees here today and we all slept in our underwear, naked armor unafraid of the shaking ground and crumbling sky. I didn’t sleep with my jacket on and home was folded up somewhere in the corner of the tent and even though my hair was still warm hours after the sun set, the cold sat in my bones, latent and freezing, seeping into my marrow and choking me around the throat.
I haven’t cried yet. And maybe I should because people next to me on the battleground will suddenly burst into tears like they’re remembering the face of their dead best friend and no one says anything, just shoots a silhouette of bullets around him until he’s able to aim straight.
Maybe I’ll start crying when I start aiming at the enemy.
Love, Harry
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Dear Harry,
Me and Riley went on a walk today, through the woods on the other side of the highway, even though you say it isn’t safe. Well, maybe the woods will be our war and we’ll fight invisible enemies with guns made of tree branches and bombs will fall in leaves and maybe Riley will stop having nightmares if she thinks an airstrike feels like a butterfly’s kiss. If she believes you’re safe. If I believe you’re safe. If you believe you’re safe.
Anyway, we were walking and something caught my eye, hanging out of the sky, big and black and hulking and it was that god damned treehouse we tried to build when we were kids. You know, the one where we went when it wasn’t safe to hold hands anymore and our love was a crime punishable by exile.
Well, it embarrassed me a little to be there with our daughter when I think of how many times my back’s been pressed down against that damp, old wood floor, but we climbed up anyway and it looked like God himself had used it a stomping ground. The planks of wood are all peaked in the middle like steepled hands and the windows are crooked and the south wall is punched out but it’s just as big and just as wide, and just as smelly as it used to be and that one branch still runs along the ceiling, ‘cept it’s pushing up against it now, and those old Polaroids we stuck into the wood with nails from your dad’s toolbox are faded into a nauseous yellow-white and they’re old and wrinkled but it’s the first I’ve felt of home since you left.
So me and Riley talked it over and we’re gonna fix up this new home for us to live in when you get back. We’re gonna hang new photos and use better wood, maybe one that the world won’t eat through.
Love, Louis
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Dear Louis,
The sky fell yesterday.
The sky is heavy, Louis.
It’s heavy and hard and it doesn’t brace for impact. I’m starting to think the stars are the innards and the black is its skin because when the sky hit, there was so much light and so much heat I thought I might burn up. I could see it in my mind’s eye: flesh melting off the bone and blood tracking your cheeks like tears made of human stars. It took me a minute to realize my mind doesn’t have eyes and this was all real time, scene of the crime, eat me alive, 11:00 news TRAGEDY and I was wrapped up in my sleeping bag, like I could still fend off the terrors the world had to offer me.
It was only when I saw my jacket catch fire that something finally stirred me from apathy and I lunged towards home because a house on fire still has people in it, and this one in particular had our daughter in it. The edges of the photo are singed and there’s a black spray across that angel face and although our home may be soiled, at least you have a hammer and nails.
Sometimes I feel like I’m in that treehouse, committing sin and floating outside the real world. Only sin with you felt like Heaven itself and shooting a man in his bulletproof chest feels like the very last circle of Hell.
And although I’m sure that’s where my father is now, I don’t think his stubborn soul could bear the comparison between love and murder. Or are they the same things?
Love, Harry
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Dear Harry,
Riley pouts when I won’t let her use the power saw and chews on her fingers after removing the photographs from the wood. Some of the ink stained the wood and if it wasn’t so rotten, I’d leave that galaxy marbled mural in place, broken up only by photo edges and holes where the nails were.
We spend a lot of time dangling above the ground, swallowed by the sky. This tree is thick and strong and supports even the heaviest of hearts and up here we float in a blue balloon, nothing sharp or rough around us.
Yet I would give anything to trade in your combat boots and tanks for flying fists and broken whiskey bottles. I know you loved your father, even if you hated everything he did to you and your mother and I’m still confused as to why you need war so bad. You fling yourself from one to the other like you’re running out of time and you need to get in the last punch.
This treehouse is so warped and I can’t find our fingerprints anymore, but let me fight the test of time. Let me take this one on.
Love, Louis
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Dear Louis,
I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you. Letters come in like rain falls in this hellscape and these college ruled lines are blurring blue on the paper and I don’t know what they’ve been through but at least I know it started with you.
I saw my general cry today because he just became a grandfather, and now his age finally matches his soul. His granddaughter’s name is Julia, like the song, and her mother is now considered a composer.
God, I miss our little girl. I wish I was there to tie her hair up in pigtails and watch her face light up when I made that special macaroni and cheese. I wish there was some way to hold her and let her know that Daddy’s here.
But I’m not. No, instead I’m out here, where they couldn’t crack the land to plant a damn tree and now all I see of that treehouse is the cracks between the wood and how the wind would come whistling through them so we shoved towels in between them and made love standing up. Those splinters in our feet don’t seem so bad now and baby, if you’re a war, I’d fight you every time.
Love, Harry
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Dear Harry,
It’s raining out today, so the work on the treehouse has been put on hold. Riley is at a friend’s house and I’m stuck in this one. The rain is lashing against the window like it’s trying to break in, and maybe I should let it. Maybe it’s time to flood this house and start all over. Maybe a place where you never slept won’t feel like the antithesis of home and I’ll finally be able to hang the oven mitt right. Right?
Well, no of course not, that’s not how things work. I won’t be home until this gaping hole in my chest closes up and I can hold you closer than I’ve ever held anything, even Riley, even hope. Even faith.
Riley wants to know why we aren’t going to church to pray for you and all I could say was that we had to finish building the treehouse. But you took Him, too, didn’t you? Of course you would. You echo in cathedral halls and taste like wine on my tongue but it’s a whole lot different when there are screams bouncing off the walls and there’s blood gushing from your mouth. I don’t know if you’re praying, but please don’t be angry that I’m not.
I’ve been screaming at a lot of empty skies lately. I’ll sit out on our deck porch swing and go hoarse while looking for some scrap of salvation and Riley gets scared and the neighbors shut their windows and I realize it’s about to rain.
Love, Louis
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Dear Louis,
I don’t meant to sound morbid, but flooding the house seems like a good idea. Let it cleanse you. Let it purge you of this last year and wash yourself clean. Your last letter had a coffee ring on it and the careless reminders of a home long lost make me yearn for a view down the barrel of a gun and that treehouse may never be finished but at least let the tree grow.
Tell Riley I love her. Don’t tell her I lost the picture of her.
Love, Harry
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Dear Harry,
The walls of the treehouse are newer, now and the floor isn’t peaked in the middle. The window is still crooked, but it lets you see the world through a new perspective. Riley hung some pictures with tape instead of nails; I figured it was a lot gentler and kinder than splinters and fairytales.
If we have to flood the house, we need a new place to build our home and I figure where else than the place closest to it? It’ll be different without you, but it’ll be home – a new kind of home that lets the old one go and sells the souls inside for a nickel apiece. I don’t think the wind will be whistling in this home, but I think a lot of ghosts are fighting over the property.
We still need a new roof; a new thing that can protect us. We still need new beams; new things that can support us. We still need a substitute for the towels in the cracks because there’s a lot of ghosts that need to be kept out.
We’re missing a whole third of the home and that’s a lot to make up for with strong branches and shaky faith.
Find that photograph.
Love, Louis
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Dear Louis,
When I come home, I want to see that treehouse; I want to see it shining and new. I know I said to flood the house, but put your sweat into our home. I can’t wait to see your face and pull Riley’s hair into pigtails. I can’t wait to make a new bed in our new home and we’ll never be more than an inch apart. I can’t wait to cook in a kitchen instead of burning my fingertips on metal cans over a fire. I can’t wait to give our little girl piggy back rides through the woods and walk to church on Sunday mornings. I can’t wait to hold your heartbeat next to mine. I can’t wait…
I can’t wait.
Love, Harry
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Mr. Louis Tomlinson
43 Rainer Avenue
Cambridge, England 11234-45689
I wanted you to know how much we regret the loss of your husband, Private First Class Harry E. Styles. The entire unit joins me in sending our deepest sympathies and understanding during this period of bereavement.
Please know that we have shared in your pain and sorrow and pay our final respects to one of our best friends and comrades. Harry will certainly be missed by all of us.
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Dear Harry,
We finished the treehouse.
I feel safe here.
Love, Louis