Changing One Word 1/25/08

I left the letter on the kitchen counter. I had covered it in flour and was tracing new letters over it with my finger. Odd behavior, I know, but my own logic was twisted up in my actions. Maybe it is something I could explain to you, if I ever get the chance. I am all out of chances.

I was standing over your letter, tracing you a new one when it happened. I had the perfect view, from where I was, of the door as it swung open. It wasn’t as dramatic as I always imagined it would be. I had left the door unlocked, a completely accidental error in my judgment. It meant that there was no kicking down of the door. Nor was there a clever scheme that involved a lost child or some other made up thing designed to make me open the door. I heard an odd bump and looked up to see my door swinging open.

He was scrawny, not strong or thick in any way. I had always imagined that if this sort of thing happened, he would be strong. He would be the kind of big man who could overtake me with a look. The man in front of me was not the man that I imagined. He looked young. Younger than me. He could not grow a real moustache, though it was apparent that he had tried. I saw him and I wasn’t even scared. I was surprised. There is a difference, or maybe there was right then. I almost opened my mouth to speak, maybe to ask him if I could help him in some way. Then I saw the gun.

My palm fell flat onto the flour. No more letters over letters. Just a handprint surrounded by scribbles. A gun. A gun. He had it pointed at my head. I didn’t really even know what to do. My thoughts swam in desperation. Then I went blank. There was nothing left to think. Nothing to think about.


This is the beginning of a story I wrote that was basically all about how much I love my words and how much I love writing. It was a strange story and I wrote it at the very beginning of this period where I started writing a lot more than I had been writing before. I think that because I was out of practice it didn’t turn out very good. It certainly didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped that it would.

The story centers around this main character, the first person narrator. She is desperately in love with someone that she can’t have or who perhaps doesn’t want her, so she wrote him a letter. What happens in the story is that these guys come into her house, tie her up, and deposit her in the bathroom. Then they start looking around and they find the letter. Instead of just leaving it where it is, one of the guys takes it and makes her read it aloud as if she wrote it for him. He makes her write a new version of the letter, replacing only her former lover’s name with his. After she has done this he points the gun at her and makes her tell him that she loves him. These two acts take away all the power of the letter.

The thief leaves without taking any of the things that thieves are known to take, such as televisions and DVD players. The only thing he takes from her is this new letter, the one that he had her write his name into. She doesn’t want the old one anymore. It has been tainted. After she calls the police she sits down to have a cigarette. It is her first cigarette since the letter’s original intended recipient told her that he could never date a smoker. When the thief took the letter, he took away all hope of her ever getting her ex-lover back as well.

That explanation makes it seems very complicated and maybe it is. Like I said, I wrote this after a period when I hadn’t been doing very much writing, so I was out of practice. Anyway, this piece meant two things for me. First, it taught me that I need to write on a regular basis or else my stories come out all mushy. Second, it made me really think about the power that I give to my words and how crappy I feel when other people take them and switch all the meanings around. When she writes the new letter for the thief she only changes one thing, but that one thing is the one thing that makes all the difference. I think that I will always worry about people changing my words around. It won’t be the same as it is in this story. I don’t think that anyone is going to break into my house and steal my notebooks and make me change words so that things are all about them. I think that my fear is that people won’t understand what it is that I am trying to say and will take things to mean something other than what they are.

I guess that’s just one of the risks that come with my chosen profession. It’s just a hard one for me to swallow.