This love letter is a composite of several letters written over a long period of time. There is really no reason to post it here other than to share the beauty of the sentiment. If you’ve had enough cheese today, you can pass it by. But I think it expresses an essential quality of relationship which I’ve begun to conceive of as universal and accessible by other means than just a single person. It’s about the soul longing for God, Who is seen wherever the eyes are capable.
A thousand hellos. If I could fold myself enough, and survive the journey, I would send you my hand to hold instead of this letter. But since paper and ink are like trusted friends, I gave them these words of affection and asked them to seek you out.
I think of you often here – where the wind and the sea are cold, and the chill probes me with its ghostly fingers. But the memory of you keeps me warm. It chases away the minutes and the hours until I forget where I am.
Recall me to myself, for I soon forget once thoughts of you have cast their net.
I teeter on the brink of falling headlong. A wave of insanity has risen to immerse me. Sometimes my pen and I sit here, in this cafe or around town, commiserating. He leaves a stream of black tears – which are here, dried on this paper. Our rapport is so strong, his weeping traces my thoughts; so I send you this record of our misery, showing as it does my feelings.
So many words clamor to express themselves. Patience, I tell them; not everything must be done at once. But can you sense the state of my being? Everything is in uproar. The signposts are uprooted – there is no more sense of left and right, up or down. The days are nights, and sleep finds me only as the sun rises. What is to come of my heart’s kingdom? You have conquered it without sword or arrow.
Where banners once flew in proud disdain a king now weeps for his kingdom’s bane.
The space between us is a great plain over which the steed of time only saunters. His insouciance drives me mad. I speak to him about you, and who we go to meet, but his ears only twitch as if to say, “My pace is set, my friend; even mortal love cannot change it.” But he is so wrong! Whether we go fast or slow, desire lengthens the distance with every step. If only I had wings, I would leap from this costive mare to find you.
Perhaps the folds of my letter have stuck together from the sweetness of the ink; or maybe this paper, bent to take its burden, has whispered something of its ardent master. At times I wonder if they will steal my words, and offer them to the sugar merchants for an easy exchange. But if my humble thoughts do not reach you for whatever reason, my prayers and love are certain to. What else can be said? Words, even if well-crafted, can only hold so much. “For the stream’s bed cannot hold the sea.”
When I think of you lately, a wash of light suffuses my being. I feel joy in places unrelated to my physical self. This is a new experience for me. What organ feels the bounty of love? It is a mystery of gladness that ruins my days and nights. You make me sigh. You make my eyelids flutter. In the mornings, I recall the music of your voice and can no longer stay in bed. This energy won’t let me alone. A deep pleasure runs through my muscles like a current. And my heart… sometimes, I think, were it susceptible to feinting, I would lose my mind.
I am so much in love with you. If you touched me now it would send me to heaven. Do you realize your power? Yet you are so kind. I want to curl up around the phone and let your sweet voice send me to oblivion… Now I feel constantly as if I have to write you, or write poems – or do something to relieve this pressure of light longing to shine out. You’ve made my days and nights a constant sunrise, each promising to begin the best day of my life.
To the poet in me you have been the most lovely muse. It isn’t hard at all to write when I think of you. My fingers seem to know the way and summon the words to follow. The pen feels light in my hand. The ink hungers for the paper. Your magic has awoken a magic within me – until I feel fey and mystical, ready to split the night of remoteness with a single stroke. Whatever you’ve done, it shakes me to the core and back again, filling my mind with sweet memories. I believe now that knowing you is one of God’s gifts to me.
What can I do, but write to stave off this insanity? Call me again some time, my sweetheart. Call me and let me hear your voice so I can survive another day. Whatever semblance of peace I once had is fled. Your memory chases away all other thoughts. Call me and resuscitate this poor creature, for whatever I might be doing when you read this, the rest of me longs to hear from you.
But how can I last in your presence? How can I keep from fading to a sigh and rejoining the vapors of pre-existence? If I could write, “I love you”, strong enough to mirror my heart, it would fly from this page and wrestle you to the ground, and show such devotion as to melt you away. Though words can only go so far. These have hardly conveyed my turmoil. I have to stop – or even my fingers will go insane! I love you. All the rest, only God and angels may know. Perhaps they will whisper it to your soul in the deep of night, or grant you the sweet dreams of loving reunion.
After all this things only grow more intense. Your smile is a luminous liquid, seeping inside to warm me everywhere. That water turns to fire, and then watching you is like a presence of flame: it cooks my heart over embers that won’t leave me alone! I write this after seeing you briefly and the burning will not cease. I’ve talked about it to one friend, but talking only makes the pain worse. Yet I can’t leave off thinking of you for the pain. Thinking or talking about it only makes the wounds bleed fresh. My spirit is trapped between sight and blindness: both are a torment. Remoteness is like sliding through time on the edge of a blade.
These have been profound days. I am reading right now the story of Majnun and Layli, by Nizami. How fine to see those expressions of madness and know a glimmer of their purity. I suppose every experience in life educates us – though the school of love mistreats its students. They prepare us for a greater understanding in time.
I think of you as a sign of God, revealing rays of the Immortal Beauty in your pretty eyes, your laugh, your amazing smile. It affects me deeply enough to realize: only God can touch my soul that way. Then I remember how He created the world to reveal His attributes – and there they are: the beauty of life, the joy of loving, manifested in the simple fact of your being.
Love answers to no one and makes no excuses; some things must be said whether wisdom confirms it or not. I write this in pain – but for the beauty of that pain. I love you. I shall always cherish your memory as one who gave me the gift of dwelling in the fires of rapture. From that experience I have been nurtured in the mystic’s way. It helped acquaint me with the nature of my Goal.
You are such a heart-slayer! You kill me. And now that I am gone, what remains must say goodbye.