FREE LOVE LETTERS

Love letter # 329

Facebook told me it was your birthday, so I posted the usual blurb on your Timeline – but

it really said nothing about how seeing your name and remembering you triggered me.

With a thought I was seventeen and seeing you again in the gold autumn light after school. You were so close to me but you may as well have been on the other side of the universe. I was paralysed. Your beauty, my desire – how they conspired to strike me dumb.

I think now about why I never said anything back then. I guess I was so utterly afraid you’d say no. I just couldn’t stand the idea that someone I adored might think nothing of me; or at any rate not enough of me.

The funny thing is I don’t regret it – because even now you are an angel in my estimation. You still hover like the promise of indescribable ecstasy. A girl undiminished by the mundane erosion of relationship. A dream not woken by uglier realities. I can think of you and still hear the bell ring. It vibrates the cells in my body. The memory electric.

I do not know if you ever thought fondly or romantically of me, yet what a treasure you have given me. With your terrifying beauty. With the distance you so perfectly maintained.