You hated me that day. Even without saying anything, I know you hated me. Maybe you would have liked me to be in her place. Your nature is kind. Hard to believe that you could ever harm anyone. Yet, after reading that story, you hated me and wished me to be dead instead of her. How can I explain to you that nobody died? How can I make you see that she doesn’t even exist? She’s nothing but my invention. A strange girl living in fantasy, not even a girl actually, but rather the thought of a girl, a blurred image that can never get shape as a human because the only consistence it has is that of letters and words. Did you like her at least? Did you feel pity, did you share her sorrows, her deepest pain? Did you feel anger when I decided to kill her? Injustice? Sadness? Sour taste in your mouth? After all, it’s just a story about someone who was never real. Yes, it could have been real, and the story could have been true. But it isn’t. Perhaps you’re just surprised about the cruelty hidden in me. Some would say that there’s a bit of cruelty in each of us. That’s why people kill animals, and for the same reason people kill other people too. My sin is big, but definitely not as big as you make it seem. I don’t feel the need for any repentance, it’s not my way to apologize for a crime I didn’t commit. I’m just curious to see how you would react if circumstances are different, and for that I’ll wake up again, stretching my body under the warm blanket, yawning and stretching again, I’ll open my eyes with a lazy, slow movement of the lids and I’ll see (as if for the first time), right beside my head, on the pillow, alienated of anything familiar to me, though longing to be revealed, the red torn handkerchief.
It’s a small handkerchief. A small thing to be used by small hands. Fragile itself, so probably belonging to someone equally fragile. Do you know the first thing I have in mind seeing it here? Memory. This is the perfect gift that can make one remember. You take that jacket you didn’t wear for a long, long time, and all of a sudden find it in your pocket. In less than a second, everything comes back in your mind: the shiver in her body when she gave it to you, the trembling hand, the perfect, beautiful shyness brightening her eyes, even her voice (See, I made it for you...). For a moment you feel like smiling. It’s so much like her! When you forget why you love her so much, it’s enough if she does one of her sweet childish tricks and then you know for sure that you’ll never be able to live without her. You can’t even imagine how not-having-her is. You know for sure that you didn’t miss her before. Before knowing her, you didn’t miss anyone. The strange thing is that you can’t find anything important in your life-without-that-girl. Some faces of people you call family or friends, some casual events classified by your conscience as happy or sad, general stages of human existence that left no mark on this particular individual summarizing them now... You can’t find anything important in your life-with-that-girl either, but then she makes her tricks, for instance giving you this tiny, red handkerchief as a Christmas gift, and you know for sure that it’s impossible to imagine how not-having-her is, she’s so much present in everything related to your life that there is certainly no life when she’s not present.
You don’t seem to like the burden of fragility very much. I made her give the handkerchief to you and you’re already hiding. I may be right, you know? Men don’t like fragile things because they are not used to handle them. Look around and you’ll see big cars, big houses, big names for big functions, everything big, big, big! And all their weakness and limitations hidden behind them. So what do you think he did when finding the handkerchief in his pocket? I imagine his rough, working hands holding this little miracle delicately embroidered, I imagine his eyes falling on its particular design – circles and flowers and curve lines going to nowhere, suddenly interrupted like the flow of a thought which was not supposed to be there at all... It’s crystal clear, in his mind, that she was dreaming in that moment of embroidery birth. It’s even more obvious that she was dreaming of him. Like any other man, he’s afraid of her dreams. Feeling his fear, her hand trembled and her eyes lost the track of the needle and silk thread. I wonder sometimes how it feels like when dying. Is it like in those dreams when someone is chasing you and you’re not able to scream or run away? Is it like when you feel too tired and weak to move your hand for a glass of water? Is it like fainting, when you’re perfectly conscious that you’re losing consciousness bit by bit? She must have felt like that, you see, since for a small, almost unnoticeable portion the line is missing both circles and flowers. But he can’t know all this and I can’t make him notice. You blame me again. Maybe you think that I can do anything I want. What if I close my lips to his ears and whisper what he should have seen even without my help? Do you think is this how things work? A boy and a girl looking for each other... So close, yet unable to meet... You watch the movie and your heart beats faster and faster, waiting for the moment when he will notice, or she will notice... And you feel like shouting at them... You’re furious and frustrated when their meeting fails... So maybe you try to warn them... Hey, she’s here!... Turn your head right!... No, no... Not on that way!... Just wait a few more seconds... She’ll come!... I see her coming!... Of course you can see, but the problem is that he’s not that lucky. And your words can’t get through the screen just as mine can’t get through the paper. So our guy can’t know anything about that minute of loss she had and she didn’t say anything either. This girl is so young, so innocent, so naive. She expects him to understand because he loves her. This is a perfectly reasonable cause-effect relation and she fully trusts it. I also expected that you would retell the story of my handkerchief, but you didn’t. I thought you would because it was just a harmless game, because I was so curious to read your mind and because I asked you to. It seems that we’re living in a world of deception and, against this world, you would like me to write her fairytale. But the handkerchief is torn and there are no torn handkerchiefs in fairytales.
The crease...Who made this crease? First of all, it was me, when I created the handkerchief. Secondly, it was his carelessness that let it in his pocket for such a long time. A crumpled piece of material loses it’s beauty. Sometimes, the same thing happens to crumpled souls. Sometimes, our love depends on that beauty. Unfair as it may seem, we need beauty to make love survive. The girl is still young and still beautiful, but her small handkerchief made by her delicate hands is no longer precious. He feels kind of embarrassment now, looking at this red, insignificant object. He doesn’t know how to make it pretty again, and even if he does, he will always have this image in mind - the crumpled hanky arousing pity and guilt.
I still couldn’t get an answer for the significance of its colour. All the handkerchiefs I ever had were white and boring. I like white. When it’s about handkerchiefs, white is calm, peaceful and safe. But it can’t draw attention because it’s too common. On the other hand, red can, and that even in a discreet manner. Girls of their age also like to read books about the symbolism of flowers, colours, words, dreams. Just like the children, they are not yet ready to accept that things are what they are and nothing more beside that. For them, everything hides a story – a rock on the road, a cloud, a torn red handkerchief. People who can read these stories are equally happy as the ones who can’t, but they suffer more, when they get the feeling that they don’t belong anywhere. I suppose this girl is still happy. She doesn’t know where the handkerchief is. She had something to say, she said it in her own way, by offering herself in a handkerchief, and for the time being she’s not asking for more. This is all I can do. You want her happy, don’t you? The girl is happy, for you.

The girl is happy, the handkerchief – torn. I didn’t hear you leaving in the morning. You were silent as usual, like a fugitive. The only thing to prove your stop over here, just a few hours ago, is not even something belonging to you. I know to whom it belongs, and because of that I can’t help wondering what the hell it is doing on my pillow, disturbing my sleep with its red presence, reminding me of things I should have forgotten by now, storming my memories in search for that particular one I can’t actually remember. You have no idea how much I hate you sometimes, for not having the privilege and the freedom to give you a small gift like that - the illusion of being with you when distance makes it impossible. Strangely, but I don’t hate that girl. I took revenge against her by tearing her handkerchief. I did it perfectly consciously and proud of my silly act. Double silly, actually, since I lied to myself that seeing it torn would hurt you also. I planned everything carefully, even the smallest details. I wanted to enjoy the revenge till its bare end. I knew you will come again. Maybe you love both of us, and you love her a little bit more. That’s why you always come back to me. That’s why you’ll never quit coming back to her either. So I knew you will come. Right before turning off the lights for the night, I let the handkerchief fall on your pillow. As soon as I felt you moving beside me, I cuddled into you and I heard myself whispering... Close your eyes... Pretend you don’t know I’m here and you don’t know that I’m the one who let the handkerchief fall on your pillow. Pretend you’re surprised to find it there, as if coming from nowhere, and tell me... Do you know? Can you retell the story of your handkerchief?