Correspondence

My Beloved,

I knew the poem would resonate within you, as it did inside me.

How am I, you ask?

I move through my days in a quiet rhythm. Melancholy and hope more or less in balance. I feel an emptiness and a restlessness and "I've grown really good at missing you...I practice every day". The past is slowly receding and the future grows more alluring.

I watched the film In Bruges, a few days ago. Have you seen it? While the screenplay was oddly compelling, it was the locale, the city itself, that took my breath away. I vowed that I will visit Bruges someday.
I had no idea such a gem existed. And I thought how much I'd love to visit Bruges with you, how I know that you would be every bit as enchanted as I...

I worry about you every day...throughout each day.

And I contemplate what you wrote in your thank you card, that:
"I am blessed having you in my life" when all the while I feel like a forlorn exile...standing alone as you recede farther into the distance. Left to cheer for you and pray for you and love you as a stranger from the outside looking in...no longer truly "in your life."

I look beyond the snow and ice knowing that spring will come. I am patient with myself, others, the season and the healing. I wish there was music in my life, in my heart, but there's precious little. It doesn't bother me as much as it once did...but I patiently await its return as a sign of redemption and a harbinger of joy. Much like Noah, I suppose, waiting for the dove to return bearing an olive branch.

I grow thinner. My hair brush collects ever more hair. I ponder when, not if, to adopt a dog and a cat or two (I sorely need the exercise and great big dollops of animal wisdom).

And I sort and cull and donate and discard...preparing the foundation for a new life that I know will be slow in coming yet am certain will arrive. I take a Seroquel tablet at twilight to sleep and I experience incredibly vivid dreams. Some nights, I dream of you.

And how are you, My Love?

* * *

Risk
by Anaïs Nin

And then the day came,
when the risk to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took to Blossom.

* * *