Love letter # 542

There are certain forms of beauty – nature, music – that bring me back to you; and in doing so make plain the bittersweet breadth of the distance between us. Yet, in these moments, you fill that space, the valley of time, and, by some fanciful conjuring, collapse the years to the nearness of touch.

Now, again, I stand barely a yard from your dark eyes. Dumbstruck and awed. And the blue gold light colours everything with splendour. And my aching takes on the guise of oceans.

I say the things I never said. Whispered in the cathedral of vintage affection.

For a second, I wish you could hear. Then, with a breath, I give thanks you cannot. Let the silence be my love for you, unsullied by the failings of ordinary language.

In these quiet moments – these occasional tricks of light – I visit you as a wanderer, happening upon you. On the road outside your house. In the hopeful blush of spring. Vanished wonder. And in the place of the foolish mirage, a tenderness as unbroken as the passage of seasons.