Dear John,
It was when they told me Ash was dead. They didn’t say dead. They arrived uniformed at my cell door, confusingly kind. ‘Passed’, they said, solemnly. ‘Dead’, I said back, like you and I would say. Well, I assume you still would say even if you could barely speak through grief tears, guilt tears. You and I say it as it is. Our feelings don’t corrupt our words. At least, I imagine you are the same as me, as you were before.
Passed. Flesh to dust. Gone. Ash with his laugh as sharp as cracking teeth on hard licorice, when out of toothpaste. I’ll tell you now, 20 years on from when I last saw him – and you – I was always a little afraid of Ash. Not in a bad way, I never thought he’d whack me, or worse, grass on me, but I couldn’t live up to expectations. He watched me as if I were the biggest present around the tree and I knew I was just more socks.
We were all young then, skin like statues of saints, except the big fellow with acne scars. And we never cried, which is why I’m struggling to imagine you reading this now. Maybe you are grey, or worse, bald. Surely those days in strong sun, and nights in bivvy bags, have chapped, cracked and creviced your cheeks. Perhaps you’re fat, a drinker. Perhaps you’re thin, with track marks up your arms. Perhaps, in the end, you weren’t the one who got away.
I hope you’re not dead too. I would know. The grey men who stood at my grey door would have told me. If anyone knew. Who can die privately these days? Not even you. Even death is not the world we fought for. A corpse burnt on a pyre in a forest, the way it should be, back to the Earth.
So John, I’m writing this letter just like we said we shouldn’t. In this world we fought to stop, to you who may not still exist.
There are worse things to happen. You could have changed. Passed, actually, I would say. From our ethics to theirs. From our struggle to their…nothing.
“If you ever have to contact me from afar,” you said, “but, don’t. Never”
“I won’t” I answered, as you wanted me to, as I believed.
“Then send it here, to this cabin, I’ll get it.”
I nodded. You were young, I was younger. More desperate. I was a Saint but you were a God.
“But don’t.” You insisted. I laughed.
I promised I wouldn’t.
I’ve kept that promise. I kept my promise of silence on the stand when they offered me a plea bargain for names. I kept that promise through 20 years of unwanted company then unwanted solitary with shit up the walls. I kept it through experiences of socks far worse than unloved Christmas presents, just like the movies, pool balls that disconnect your eyeball because you looked at the other girl wrong. I’m squinting as I write this, but I kept my promise.
You see, there is talk of me getting out. Whispers again. If.
Stranger stuff has happened. They’ve released MOVE prisoners, Mumia out of death row, and we – you, me, Ash, the others unnamed – are just history now. Forgotten, though I still get a few cards at Christmas with circled A’s crossed out by the wardens. The first ten years they just didn’t let those cards in. They do now. Either me or circled A’s have no power now.
We sent cards anonymously when just Ash was in, from towns we were leaving so they wouldn’t track us. Then after I went down, me and he wrote weekly – my prison to his – our names and numbers cocooning familiar words of nothing to say. I needed those letters. I need to write this. I won’t use code though, remember? I’ll say nothing more on it, but you’ll know what I am saying if you recall that night on June 18th in the mountains, and it didn’t feel cold.
I would give anything to know again that mountain cold, air that suckers like a gut punch, stars lit up like Gestapo spotlights, even the crude gasp of drilled damaged earth to stare into with that love inspired vengeance. To feel moss and grass not concrete beneath my feet. I owe the Earth a goodbye.
Just like you owe me.
What have you done with 20 years not inside? Kids riding on your shoulders while you ran down a hill? Near drowning swimming out to hidden boats on freezing seas? Writing under a pen name by a velvety warm fire? Loved again? Lost again? I can send you my routine if you like, that’s what I’ve done, just like they tell me, unless I don’t, then it’s a colder, more terrible place. Fortnight in the windowless tomb.
You know what I’m saying, John, dear John, because there’s no point to code is there?
You’ve been out in the wilderness, and I’ve been here and it’s my time, out there.
That night, at your cabin we were waiting for Ash and the others, but the others got away.
“What if Ash got caught?” I fretted.
The kiss on my neck, your arms around me, tight and secure like a nice electric chair.
“Ssh. Never think the worst.”
I tried not to, but he didn’t come, and we took meagre seconds of the rabbit stew so there was enough for Ash and X, Y and T. You opened up the whisky and blew at the dusty neck, lightly, like a dandelion clock, one o’clock.
Three o’clock.
We drank the whisky into the morning, more lovers than comrades. Still, they didn’t come.
But there were no secrets amongst our own and news came quick, as we were getting up. It leaked in like carbon monoxide poisoning, this rumour from that ex of yours – he’d been arrested just for shoplifting, then the neighbour heard a few more charges he was recognised for, only criminal damage, then when I was cleaning up the rabbit skinning stains, you said, in a tight voice:
“We need to go”.
You were right. We did. Ash never told, but someone did. We stuffed our bags with essentials, crept out low to the ground and straight to the treeline, binoculars out. We watched with the FBI descend. They stripped it, plank by plank, piranhas on bone, throwing out each small belonging into the cruel elements we were giving our lives for. I was wrong when I said we never cried. We cried then. I held you tightly, in our furs and leathers, as if we could be each other’s homes.
Like family. As if that’s a good thing.
If you remember, I don’t have much time for mine. My mother’s written to me twice. Both in the first ten years, none in the last. She didn’t mention my Uncle. The Uncle I told you about, before I let you near me. And then you quoted Martin Luther King ‘saying nothing, doing nothing is betrayal’ about my Mum. Though my saying nothing, doing nothing when I went to prison wasn’t betrayal it was loyalty. Sometimes saying nothing is everything.
But where’s yours? You said nothing, did nothing. I checked papers to see what ski resorts you burnt down, what bridges blown, what politicians targeted, or even articles you wrote and oh there was nothing.
Saying nothing, doing nothing is betrayal.
You’ve had twenty years.
The last I saw of you was the collar of your coat when I got caught. We stayed in that broken old town too long, with the truck we should have exchanged. You and I were just a few steps apart when they grabbed me but not you. And you spun around, turned up your collar and were gone.
So here’s your letter, that we know they will read. Let’s pretend it’s not in code. Pretend this is it, all there is to say, in black and white. Pen. on. Paper. Got that? Pen. on. Paper.
It’s time I felt air, ground. I’m even hungry for the bit before the mountains, the City, shoving sweaty joes on the subway, the sour breath of a drunk, the thin harmony of a tired busker. Time for you to come in John, rest up those thick reliable legs on a thin mattress you’ll grow used to, read the same novel from the scant library until you find yourself in it, learn a language you never wanted to before, find a faith, any faith, so you can kneel in a place that’s not alone.
It is time for the exchange John.
It is the sweetest way I can swap us, I don’t want to grass on you, I keep my promises.
Dear John, this is my love letter and my final farewell.
Yours, as ever
xx
Bio
Tabitha Bast lives in Bradford, UK and works as a sex and relationship therapist, loves nature, and revolutionary struggles. Writes a personalised feminist blog on positive masculinity https://theboysarealright.substack.com/
Tabitha has 11 short stories in print and online anthologies and is currently working on a collection of Climate Change stories set in 2030. So far in 2024 has had the following published: “The Creation of Adam, “Be True to Your Bar” with Punk Noir Magazine, “Because of What is Out There” in “Hunger: An Anthology” with Urban Pig Press 2024.
Photo by Carles Rabada on Unsplash
Urban Pigs Press 
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