There’s a kind of time travel in letters, isn’t there? I imagine you laughing at my small joke; I imagine you groaning; I imagine you throwing my words away. Do I have you still? Do I address empty air and the flies that will eat this carcass? You could leave me for five years, you could return never—and I have to write the rest of this not knowing.

I ramble, it seems, when writing to the darkness by hand. How embarrassing. I’m quite certain I’ve never rambled a day in my life before this. Another thing to give you: this first, for me.

I write to you in stings, Red, but this is me, the truth of me, as I do: broken open by the act, in the palm of your hand, dying.

I don’t give a shit who wins this war, Garden or the Agency – towards whose Shift the arc of the universe bends.But maybe this is how we win, Red.You and me.This is how we win.