FREE LOVE LETTERS

Love letter # 38

Before you were someone else’s wife, before I was a ruin, we were children.

You are a distant angel, carved out of memory. It seems impossible that you are now only half an hour away – that you will be seated across from me. I will walk in that door, I will spot you, you will smile. Maybe you will brush your hand across the back of mine.

I never said it then – I never could. The words got mired in my dread. I adored you.

Okay, it was a hormonal teenage thing – but even now I can feel it in my body. It is a tide. It is the ocean itself.

I’ve seen your picture online – I know what the years do to a beautiful face. But I wonder – do the years put out fires? Perhaps we just retreated into the surrounding dark and left the embers glowing. Perhaps this is the morning.

Forgive me if I get ahead of myself. I bear no expectation – it’s simply that the long silent sweetness wants to whisper through the tiny cracks, to at least exhale its tender treasure.

And that is what is this letter is for. I hope that I have courage to give it to you.

There – I said it.