To One I Love.

Dear Crinkle,

I stalk you: shamefully, obsessively, denying it to everyone but my best friend, but eyes wide and heart open. There is something in the cut of your hair and the lines of your back that strikes the strings of my heart, and there are eerie similarities in the way our minds think. I love the dreamer soul in you that is restrained with numbers and brains and facts. I love that you would never cheat on your significant other; if I thought you capable of it, I wouldn’t feel so strongly.

I have raised you to the level of The Ideal. Every man suggested to me by friends, I line up with you and always, always, find him lacking. I love you—and yet I don’t. I am obsessed with your approval, and crave your attention—but not anything other than friendship. Your words and compliments give me a month’s worth of a high in one experience, and your smile makes me smile. And you’re always smiling at me, like you approve. I’ll not lie—it feels good.

Someday I hope to be loved in every way by someone like you—but not you. And because you are there, I am prevented from chasing passing fancies, like the Island Boy. They all pale in comparison to you. Perhaps my exacting standards will protect me, but that’s not my goal or desire. Right now I am content to rotate around you.

So pretty, so smart, such a waste of a young heart. What a pity, what a sham, what’s the matter with you, man? Don’t you see what’s wrong? Can’t you get it right—out of mind, and out of sight. Call on all your girls, don’t forget the boys; put a lid on all that noise.

I’m a satellite heart lost in the dark. I’m spun out so far. You stop, I start; but I’ll be true to you.

Staying true,
Irene.

To the Follower whom I Follow.

Dear Best Friend,

You make me want to be a better person. I watch as you strive to rise above the many storms of your life, and I feel a vast difference in the levels of our life experiences, but the sight of your beating wings makes me heart yearn to be so strong, as well…to rise above my own self-made molehills.

You say you have no talent, but I am in awe of your determination, your visible and hidden abilities. Your voice is gentle and low naturally, and I love hearing your tiny voice behind the music. Your writing pads across my heart, and it’s true: you are elegance itself, and it shows through your words. I love seeing you in pretty dresses, and I love worshipping next to you. I feel that, if you can raise your hands despite the hands that are trying to pull you down, then I can, too.

There are so many reasons to be jealous of you, but I can never bring myself to it. You are just so beautiful, and I am so captivated by your spirit.

This is more of a love letter than anything else, but it’s because I do love you. You have taught me how to love; you have taught me how good love can be. Before this year, my heart was sheltered in a cocoon of selfishness and disinterest. Now, through your influence and, to be honest, perhaps because of the pitfalls that you’ve gone through and have told me about, I am learning to love freely, to show emotion without restraints, and to live a life that is focused on the moments that take my breath away.

You’ve introduced me to so many good things, and when you say that you are a bad influence, I understand where your words come from…but I disagree. You open my heart and mind to things outside myself. You humble me with your own humility, your strengths and talents, and constantly show me better paths.

I just—yeah. Your friendship is a dear, special thing to me. I am trying to treasure it as I should, to treasure you as you deserve. It’s not hard to put you on a pedestal, but I want to be by your side as we go through life, to share things together, whether they are joyful or sorrowful. Better and worse apply to friendship as well as marriage, and love is only friendship set on fire.

After all, we are engaged.

Love,
Irene.

Yeah? Yeah.

I've decided to do it. The words are coming, now, at 2:45 in the morning. I won't make it; I won't make it, but I am going to try. My fingers are flying: lighting strokes on plastic letters, and the images stored up all day are pouring out.
I am unashamed of my love. I will write it out, a letter or poem at a time, and - there it will be, transformed from a cloud inside my mind to something tangible.


A poem I wrote once, in April:


Reaching Out: Part 1

If my slaved-over, soul-exposing words
can reach your heart, then the world could
never give me any promises more potent than
your smile, your open eyes.

If the sentiments exchanged would find in
you a range in which to roam, then all the soul
of hearth and home would hold no fetters on my
heart: it is gone, but not alone.

If these keystrokes or this pen could pin
your heart to mine, then all the stitched-up
pain of life would be a piece of cake, dark
wine, and moonlit mounds of pine.

Trying.

Life is weird.

Dear Best Friend.

I want to see your face, to speak so we can see heart-to-heart, to sit on a park bench somewhere and say that no matter what, I am always ready to be your friend. I will always be there for you, thinking about and praying for you.

I can’t save you from those murky depths. Perhaps my mistake was in thinking that I could, that I could find the solution for something so huge and heart-breaking.

For one who is so used to writing, I really don't want to write any of this down. Please, let us be able to talk, face-to-face.

I love you so much, Angela.
Yours truly,
Irene.