Author: Paul Ransom

  • Love letter # 586

    Did not know I wanted you. Then I saw you near. Did not think I loved you. Then you disappeared. Was not grateful for your gifts. Then the price was paid. Could not sleep for missing you. Then I crashed awake. Felt I could not walk alone. Now I travel free. Set aside the baubles…

  • Love letter # 468

    The beauty of autumn is the sweetness of memory. Especially in the gloaming. Where you reside, nigh divine and untouchable. In the waft of woodsmoke I dream of a hearth with you.  

  • Love letter # 519

    Please wait, you said…and in the ark of patience I loved you…until the distance became just that…a space beyond traversing…and then another, a fire closer than hope and memory. Please forgive me…I failed the test of time and distance…looking across the chasm of waiting…desire dissolving in increments to a numb new reality…my head finally turned…wishing…

  • Love letter # 720

    I desire you now as I did not before. I desire you now as I will not again. My desire changes each time you move. For as you move, so are you changed.

  • A summer break-up scene

    A summer break-up scene

    THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXTRACT FROM OUR RECENTLY PUBLISHED NOVEL THE LAST SUMMER OF HAIR. Now that he is back in town, he turns his attention to practicalities. He makes appointments – agent, work, accountant – and steels himself for the inevitable reunion with Aneetha Jharavindra. They agree to meet in the city. At a…

  • Love letter # 473

    However much I would like to talk to you, I am sabotaged. Perhaps it is shallow and silly to admit, but I am befuddled by your form and flow. Words catch and break. Mature demeanour disintegrates. I get sweaty. It’s terrible. The irony of your beauty is that you will most likely never see me.…

  • Love letter # 671

    You nearly had me fooled. Believing it was me. Then I saw you do the same with others. The smile, the posture, the close attention. Yet I shall not curse you. My stumbling is my imbalance. You are merely utilising the advantages given to you by nature. I would do the same if I were…

  • Love letter # 835

    How many roads have I travelled in search of belief? Schools of thought, ancient philosophers, the many isms and ideologies; these have been my citadels of faith. All have crumbled. Their gods are not merely slain but revealed to be little more than idols of fantasy. Yet I have gladly set these relics aside and…

  • Love letter # 656

    What if you are happier elsewhere? What if this is not working for you? Would I hold on? Would there even be a point to that? If I saw that look in your eye – that gazing into the distance of another – would I love you enough not to close mine? I will not…

  • For my vanished Valentines

    You. All of you. Seeping through cracks in time. Splinters in splintered memory. Each of you left behind, embraced now by distance; from which I may regard, with detached perspective, the folly of erstwhile excess and the dry ache of ancient deprivation. What was I thinking? The unkept promises, the self-pitying dramas, the cruel indecisions.…