My dear Franz,
First, I think you were very handsome. Like, really handsome. You were so ridiculously beautiful, I can’t believe it.
You were so incredibly gorgeous I could hardly look into the eyes of your portrait. I think looking straight into your eyes would send me into a flutter of girlish disaster.
Secondly,
I've read your books when I should’ve been asleep, or studying, or doing anything useful. They make me feel understood, which is a rather embarrassing thing to admit to a man who's been dead for a hundred years and hasn’t had any of my experiences. And yet you could feel it: the pages of these endlessly printed books touching and caressing my palms as if they were feeding them the words before me, interlocking their dry, toothy words with my fingers.
I understand the feeling of alienation, this haunting loneliness, and this lack of self-love—a “boundless self-loathing.” You and I are not so different, my dear.
I love how you make the most peculiar of things. You were so endlessly creatively talented, and I would kill to meet you, just for once, to wrap my arms around you and learn you. Intimately, incredibly, so deeply that you would not know who was who.
Worse still, you make me familiar. As if I hadn’t existed only once in the world, but you before me.
I wish you'd been happier. And I don't mean because you might have written more books. I would’ve been delighted by that. I simply wish you'd had more pleasant mornings, where you could see yourself as I see you so many years later, feel the sun on your pale, wondrous skin and feel alright, feel the thickness of your hair or see the darkness of your eyes peering back from your own reflection, and understand that it’s all yours, and maybe in some other life, could’ve been mine as well.
I've named a magazine after you, which is the most romantic of things I’ve ever done—had you named one after me, I would’ve wed you.
I realise I didn't ask, but you are in a difficult position to object.
I suppose this is a love letter. It isn't much use to either of us, unless you’d like to appear in my dreams to share my sentiments, of course—if you reject me, please don’t come at all!
With all my love,
-Majesté