SUZANNE. – When you left
- I don’t remember you -
I didn’t know it was going to be for so long, I wasn’t paying attention,
I wasn’t careful,
and I was left with nothing.
I forgot you pretty quickly,
I was little, young, one says, I was little.


It’s not good that you left,
left for so long,
it’s not good and it’s not good for me
and it’s not good for her
(she won’t tell you)
and it’s not good either, in a way,
for them, Antoine and Catherine.
But also
- I don’t think I’m wrong -,
but also, it must not be, it must not have been, it must not be good for you either,
for you too.
You must have, sometimes,
even if you don’t admit it,
even if you never were to admit it,
- and it is about admitting -
you must have sometimes, you too,
(what am I saying)
you too,
you must’ve needed us sometimes, and regretted that you couldn’t tell us so.
Or, being the skillful man that you are
- I believe you are a skillful man, a man we can call skillful, a man “full of a certain skillfulness” -
Or, being skillful, you must’ve regretted, sometimes, that you couldn’t make us feel this need of yours,
so that subsequently, we would, on our own, worry about you.


Sometimes, you sent us letters,
sometimes you send us letters,
They aren’t letters, what are they?
Little notes, just little notes, one or two sentences, nothing at all, how do we call those?
elliptical.
“Sometimes you sent us elliptical letters.”
When you left, I thought
(I thought so many things when you left),
when I was a child and you gave us the slip (this is where it begins)
I thought that your job, I thought what you did or would do in life,
what you wanted to do with your life,
I thought that your job was to write (would be to write)
and that either way
- and all of us here, you know that, you can’t deny it, feel a certain form of admiration, it’s the right term, a kind of admiration for you because of that -
if you ever needed it,
if you ever felt that you needed it,
if you suddenly were obliged to or desired it, you would know how to write,
how to use writing to get you out of some bad situation or to move forward even more.
But never, when it comes to us,
do you use this option, this gift (that’s how we say it, it’s a kind of gift, I believe, you’re laughing)
never, when it comes to us, do you use this virtue
- that’s the word, and a funny word when it comes to you -
you never use this virtue of yours with us, for us.
You don’t give us the proof of its existence, you don’t think we are worthy of it.
It’s for others.


These little notes
- these elliptical sentences -
these little notes, they’re always written on the back of postcards
(we have a enviable collection now)
as if by doing so, you would always seem on a vacation,
I don’t know, that’s what I thought,
or as if you wanted to make sure that the space you dedicated to us was as small as possible
and that everyone in the world would be able to read the meaningless messages you addressed us.
“I’m doing well and I hope you are doing well too.”
And even for a day like today,
even to announce such an important piece of news,
and don’t tell me you didn’t know that it was, for us, an important piece of news,
all of us, even if the others won’t say so,
you just wrote, there too, a few quick indications regarding time and day on the back of a postcard, most certainly bought at a news stand, of, let me remember, a new suburban town, seen from an airplane, with in the foreground, one can’t miss it, the international convention center.