FREE LOVE LETTERS

Author: Paul Ransom

  • Love letter # 678

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    by

    Paul Ransom
    in

    We are never so alone as when we impose loneliness on ourselves. As we have done with our various refusals. It took a moment of magic to bring us together, but that was followed by a marathon of detail, a slow adding up of insistence. Now here we are. Stranded. With our clutter and our…

  • Love letter # 365

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    by

    Paul Ransom
    in ,

    Subtly. Nearly undetected. You touched me thus. Shiver on the surface of skin. Perfume in the air. The texture of longing. A brief sense of falling. Tightening. Like a breath suspended. In the orbit of desire I circle. In your wake I have trembled, close to undone. Have I imagined your attention, falling on me…

  • Love letter # 200

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    by

    Paul Ransom
    in

    In the ragged shadow, a vacuum. An implosion. You – torn from me. Every day heavy. Numb, screaming, dissolving at the drop of thought. The breathless staggering. Unimaginable future. Then, for a long while, abrasion. The rough grain of society. The hollow chime of voices. The pretending. Yes, I’m good; which I was not. The…

  • Letter to the one who changed everything

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    by

    Paul Ransom
    in

    So ordinary. Buying a ticket at the movies. Then, a touch, a soft greeting. I turn, and there, after thirteen years and everything else, you. A brief mumble of pleasantries. I soak in the sight. Healthy, radiating. Your hair a shade lighter. Energy not so frenetic.   “Nice to see you,” you say, eyes direct.…

  • Love letter # 923

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    by

    Paul Ransom
    in ,

    Zooming out from the grit of specifics, from the aggravated dramas of relationship, all contention dissolves. All claims, all theories, all righteous insistence. At a certain remove there is only love. Like an ocean, or all of time. Perspective, absolution. The beauty of irrelevance. I ask only your forgiveness for my inevitable shortfall. When next…

  • I will (almost certainly) not be your valentine

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    by

    Paul Ransom
    in

    How to give up on the romantic ideal without becoming bitter NB: This piece first appeared on our sister blog, As If You Were Listening. Feel free to check it out by hitting the link. (Go on, you’ll love it.) Romance is not so much dead as in an induced coma. The idealised other has…

  • Love letter # 16

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    by

    Paul Ransom
    in ,

    A thousand years ago, or so it seems, I held you ever so briefly, and you, blooming, melted with me. In the eye of a loving god we were one, formed together. Yet that was barely a flicker in the scorch of years. Seeing you now, everything altered, everything as it was, ancient tenderness fills…

  • Love letter # 803

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    by

    Paul Ransom
    in

    It was all very sudden. I guess it had to be. Not so long ago I was someone else, now I am the one who loves you; and although I cannot say precisely what that means, the effect cannot be denied. If there had been a moment when I could have paused, I would most…

  • Write your name on the wall of loneliness

    Write your name on the wall of loneliness

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    by

    Paul Ransom
    in

    It happened again today. Heart breaking in a public place. A young Mandarin speaking mother sitting less than a metre to my left, exhausted as she tried to get her child to settle. Our eyes briefly met. A pale smile, flickering across the cosmic space of language, decades, and parenthood. She was drowning, but I…

  • Love letter # 64

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    by

    Paul Ransom
    in ,

    Since you. Most days. I am the near neighbour of melancholy muses. I hear them clearly. Voices in the dwelling of sorrow. Calling out my name. The sirens of improbable distance. Like today. Sadness descending, sensuous like the humid warmth of a cloudy summer day. The lustrous embrace of separation. I was in public. I…