I had this friend, Catherine. Instead of talking we would breathe. Sometimes we would eat sushi lunches; but usually we'd just breathe. This is what it looked like:

Catherine: (breathing) (translating to): my life is terrible I want to die but in a really awesome, stylistic way

Leonora (breathing): I totally hear you. You look stylish no matter what

Catherine (breathing): thanks. It's what I do

Leonora (breathing): I know

This was usually during times of Great Depression. During times of Happiness we would make up for it; we would speak, as if trying to squeeze out all the words. These would come out very fast: I-met-this-guy-online-and-fucked-him-and-then-he-fell-in-love-with-me. This was Catherine. I would just sit there nodding really fast. Then we'd go back to work. Things went on this way, until they didn't. We had a falling out; it was my fault or maybe it was hers. She said, I never want to hear from you again; and I said, me neither. Then we would reach out to a friend. We'd say, don't tell me about Catherine/Leonora, and then this friend would promptly share what we'd been up to.

It was in this way that I found out Catherine had stopped breathing; or rather her breath had gotten very slow. This is a fancy way of saying she was depressed. I wanted to tell her I understood this. Actually I wanted to tell her more. I wanted to say, I know you're miserable, let me be miserable with you. One day I imagined calling her. I am too much of a coward (and too depressed) to actually do it so I called her in my brain:

Leonora (breathing): hi it's me

Catherine (breathing): me who?

Leonora (breathing): it's Leonora.

Catherine (breathing): yeah I know who it is why are you calling me

Leonora (breathing): because I heard you were depressed. I have a proposal

Catherine (b): yeah?

Leonora; (b; working up to it): I don't think we should forgive each other. That would take too much energy. Instead we should find a room. You can sit on one side of it and I can sit on the other. We can pretend that we're not there; but maybe our subconscious minds will be glad to have the company—

Catherine (breathing): ok

We hang up the phone. One of us rents the room; probably Catherine because she actually has money. We get there; and as stated, we never actually speak; but we listen to each other's breath. In the white space is all that we've ever wanted to say, all of our forgiveness; or maybe it's just silence—

Leonora Desar has stories in or coming from Black Warrior Review, Hobart, Mid-American Review, SmokeLong, Passages North and others. She lives in Brooklyn.

Read her postcard.

Detail of art on main page courtesy of Thiago Fonseca.

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