I sat down to write you, and found I had no words of beauty. No thoughts of joy, nor feelings of passion. This frightened me more than anything ever before.
See, when I hoped to sit and write to you, to tell you of this world I adore as much because you are in it as that it is simply amazing. I suddenly discovered I had no vocabulary. No music in my heart to put to words.
This orange on the desk beside me is just a piece of fruit. The window outside shows the same view of yesterday. There is no magic in the flowers near the table – they are only flowers, and slightly wilted ones at that.
At this moment I realize, I don’t recall your face, or even the memory of your touch.
And it is with this realization that I have come to know – I have forgotten you, Love.
Love.
All the wonder and vibrancy of Love, has slipped my mind which founders in celibate loneliness. Therefore to prove I have not completely mislaid the beauty of love I shall endeavor to recall some senses:
I once found a Monarch butterfly, tragically wounded with a wing ripped free by a passing windshield. The lovely, broken creature flopped about helplessly until I scooped it into my palm where it left glittering dust upon my skin. Sitting on the curb I agreed to keep it company so it would not pass to the afterlife alone. As its final moments ebbed, I felt both profound sadness and joyful wonder. I understood I was not so different in many ways, frail and mortal, with memories of the freedom of flight and no longer the body to achieve full lift.
We passed the last of its time remembering the city view from the rooftops, the perfume of Stargazer Lilies and the bliss of air and sunshine and endless days of summer.
When the butterfly lay still in death, I was overcome with the need to love. To find my wonder in aerial views, to luxuriate in flowers and dance in my own endless summer. I found a spot near a rose bush where I placed the butterfly and continued on my journey.
As I passed the trees I admired more their greens. As I walked across the grass I stopped to remove my shoes and soak up the feel of fresh earth between my toes. I wandered by a coffee shop and paused to inhale the aroma of French Roast before meandering along the river enjoying the symphony of birds and running water.
It was a sad love, true, but it was love. The bringing of awareness to my senses again.
Then there was the time I met a boy and I was still much a girl myself. When he was near, I misplaced English and found oxygen a strange difficulty. I noticed his shaggy head from quite a distance, long before I noticed hazardous traffic racing between us. The truth was, I would see him across the street and be drawn toward him – without remembering first that speeding cars on burning asphalt barred our meeting and I would foolishly step into the road despite all logic.
When I was with him, it seemed as though I was always parched of thirst, that the sunlight more easily scorched my flesh and caused a plague of freckles and blushing to erupt. When he would smile at me, I lost all thoughts and ideas from my mind so fast I was often overcome with dizziness.
That was a young and enjoyable kind of love, the first stirrings of heartstrings before the instrument has truly learned to tune and sing. The hum of sound giving prelude to a time that orchestral music will someday burst forth, unstoppable.
Then there are the smaller memories. Sensory recollections of brief understandings of love before they are lost to the ephemeral mist.
The scent of earth before monsoons, cataclysmic lightning and thunder rattling my joints and electrifying the night sky. Then the blessed sound of rain on cracked desert outside my window.
Strawberry ice cream from the bucket as my father smiles and churns the cream from the dairy saying, “Be patient. It’s almost done.”
Friends laughing as I drag myself out of crystalline glacial water, freezing and humbled by my own foolishness and their loving amusement.
The caress of a lover’s skin.
These memories, all, are there. They exist in catalogued spaces with neatly written labels titled, “Bliss”. But the corresponding notes they used to resonate inside me are all out of tune. Mismatched and uncomfortable – syncopated – dissonant.
I sat down to write you and learned in doing that I have nothing to tell you of this world I adore as much because you are in it as that it is simply amazing. I have only a request.
Please remind my eyes that the orange on my desk is not just an orange, but a small glorious sun – ripe with flavor. Remind me that the view outside is not the same as yesterday, but all things out my window this night are hued with the golden light of the Harvest Moon’s great belly. Remind me that the flowers, though wilting, have a day’s worth of beauty in velvet tones, the last of the summer crop to be admired before they are gone.
Remind me of Monarch dust, and freckles, of strawberry ice cream and thunder. Remind me of the true music, so that the next time I sit to write you – I will have something beautiful to say.
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