The Venus Fix

Seventy

Dearest,

I am almost done. I thought I would feel some elation at my accomplishment; after all, everything has gone according to plan and I’m still not the one they blame. I should feel something, shouldn’t I? A sense of completion, at least? Or some satisfaction at having outsmarted the police?

But there’s nothing except a big gaping hole inside of me, and at the very pit of it is some feral forever-hungry animal-jaws wide open-ready to snap at every morsel thrown down. It sinks its sharp, pointed teeth into each chunk of flesh I feed it, and yet its appetite only grows.

Why won’t it stop? What else do I have to do to prove that I loved you?

Love is all I had for you. Yes, it was, and yes, it is. Don’t even whisper anything else. I would tear my guts out and eat them in front of you to prove how much I love you.

There’s nothing left I want to know, nothing left I need to do except make it up to you, make you understand that. There are only two days until your birthday. Eighteen years ago, I could never have guessed at the power of love and now I can only be amazed by its force.

When I lie in bed at night and think about you, what obsesses me still is the shame that you felt. What did I do to you that you never understood what you had, who you were, how much the world was open to you? How did I look right at you and not see that? It must have hurt you so much to have gotten through all the rest of it intact and then to have had me strip you so bare?

These women, who are not what we ever meant for women to be, rely on their bodies, their twisting, writhing, undulating bodies, and do their dances for the eyes that watch, and they never think about who is suffering because of their exhibitionism.

No one takes responsibility and no one can be held accountable because nothing is illegal and nothing is immoral, or if it is, it doesn’t matter.

You were a sacrifice to an idea and you were a dream that ended too soon. You should have been exempt and immune. You, of everyone, should not have been a victim of this, not with who I was, not with what I believed and fought for.

But you were and so I claim victims in your name because it’s not enough that they die. It’s almost enough that others watch while they die. Now all but one have been crossed off, and she will be the most satisfying because once I can cross her off, too, then I can burn the list and turn it into red-hot fire, then ash, and then from ash to dust, and it will all be done.

This I do for you.