a love letter to my neighbor

Dearly beloved neighbor:

 I don't want to go to my grave without telling you the reasons why I adore you to the moon and back.

First, let me tell you how delightful it is to find out that we share the same bedroom wall—a wonderfully thin bedroom wall. It just thrills me no end every time you drag your bed around God knows where. My heart jumps for joy whenever the dragging jolts me awake in the middle of the night and in the wee hours of the morning. I swear it enhances my focus when the noise butts in on my reading, my intellectual reflections and my spiritual meditations. I have become so addicted to the dragging noise of your mysterious furniture that I can no longer sleep without hearing it. So please, please—don’t stop. Keep dragging, every hour, every day, every time you feel like it.

Second, I find it cute how you eye my undies hanging on my clothesline. You always get that furtive, guilty, coveting look which changes instantly into disapproval the moment I catch you ogling. In recognition of your good taste, my darling neighbor, I have moved my clothesline closer to your side of the fence…that way you won’t have to squint so much. Also, I am extremely touched to see how you and your husband share so many traits, including contemplating your neighbor’s drying knickers. True love based on shared fetish still exists after all.

Finally, I am impressed by your inventiveness in finding a hundred ways of asking me if I live alone, why, how come no one visits me, if I am married, divorced, widowed, desperate, in need of a second job, in need of a cleaner, in need of a catering service! Please know, sweet neighbor, that I am profoundly moved by your interest in my status and living arrangements. So many people nowadays are cold and uncaring. In fact, I almost burst into tears once when even your children’s school driver asked, too, if I lived alone. I swear I wasn’t a bit alarmed. I swear I didn’t feel in the least bit threatened. My heart swells with affection for you whenever I remember that the bread seller, the taho vendor, the occasional plumber and the ojek drivers now know I live in solitary confinement, thanks to your  devotion to my life.

For all these and more, I will forever hold you in loving memory from the safe haven of my future home where we will not be neighbors anymore--the Jakarta Penitentiary Institution.

xoxoxo

Your one and only fangirl