FREE LOVE LETTERS

Love letter # 375

‘Breakfast’ was at the airport. Different flights. You were the first to leave. I yearned in the echoes – until I too was flown away.

The notion of you and I so brutally compacted. Like a raid. A storming of the citadel. The borrowing of small hours from much longer nights. In my numbered seat I stared into the black night and vowed never again to make such one sided bargains with time.

Was it better to have seen you? Felt you. Heard you sigh.

If anything the weight of the miles increased. I was never sure why you liked me – but I knew it wasn’t enough to make you stay.

Perhaps you wondered why I never gave chase. Because you didn’t want me to. And I was just smart enough to understand what absolute folly it would have been. A lover must be wooed – not hounded.

When I crawled into my cold bed later that night, having endured the usual interrogation and convinced myself a hundred times to end it, I clutched my arms about me and pretended they were yours. I tried to feel you inside me but even that was gone.

I fell asleep to the sound of the radio. And in my dreams at last I let you go.