Note to the Reader
by Ben Judson
As the rain wanders over the horizon and the rivers recede, I am thinking of you, reader. The demands I have placed on you have been too heavy, even as I have insisted that I am lightening your burden. I ask you to drift alone in a sea that I pretend is not a sea. I ask you to see light where there are only shadows. And after all of this, I ask you to believe that I am lying to you.
I think we will never meet, reader. The air is too thin to hold our voices. We are not even dealing with the air, but mere shadows of the air. How can we be expected to breathe, much less speak? How can I act as if I see you through this opaque air upon which I force myself? After all of this, the situation has not grown any less wretched. We stand on either side of a veil pretending to see a face in its arabesques. It is as if we try to build flames out of ashes.
But perhaps it is even too much to assume that you are my partner in this illusion. Perhaps you, reader, don’t pretend to see anything beyond the slowly expanding ripples that dance across the surface. Maybe you stop here and, wisely, refuse to ask for more. All the while I persistently look for your face in the waves, in the shadows, in the false sky. Around every corner I expect you, reader, to appear and confront me bodily. Everything is emptiness without you and so I cannot give up. Your breath, I imagine, would create the air, your gaze dissolve the shadows. So I stare at this veil, these pages with their swirling ink.
Ben Judson is a freelance writer and web developer living in San Antonio, Texas.
