I like to write letters, let my words take me places I’d rather visit with some hope of explanation. I do wish to take off with my thoughts allowing them to translate their meaning on a parchment of sorts. I remember the first time I began to write to a love in my teens. I was foolishly enamored by her ability to draw my passions, my fantasy, my desire. We were smitten in words, and our lives began to take a corner with meaning.
Oh it has been years since that first volley of letters back and forth. There was a certain affinity we had with being able to speak of any subject asking the other their notions of a topic, knowing we would receive an answer in a few days. This was a different time, one where we would imagine each other in our private worlds seeing the letter in a mailbox, tearing it open with anticipation, and walking the gravel while we read the words from our love. We didn’t have to be next to one another each moment of the day. We just knew we might anticipate such beauty in our correspondence.
We could even play games with ourselves. We would see a letter and instead of tearing it open, hang onto it, tuck it in our jeans until the right place, under an oak tree in the meadow, and open it with caution to not rip the pages, pull the parchment out of the envelope in the privacy of our city forest, quieted by the surroundings we recall together, we might read the letter and let our tears flow, because in our mind that is what love is meant to convey.
As the years progress, one correspondence might drop off as lives change, we lose touch, though in the back of our mind we still wonder, what the other might think. I sometimes imagine how much energy I put into wondering about her state of mind, and regretfully, I will often realize I am probably embellishing a recall she might have years ago moved on from. Part of the beauty of a romantic memory is to know we can imagine eternally.
Today, after years of trying to recreate that correspondence, the love, the tender repose, the solace in knowing there is someone out there waiting, I did discover a soul capable of piercing my heart with such beauty and grace, I might imagine a correspondence. And we did, we wrote to each other for quite some time, the beauty of words and the ability to paint pictures in our lives to share with another of receptive passion became a draw my life would center itself around. Though there are drawbacks.
The ability to correspond today, does not leave room for the quiet nostalgic walk up a gravel road. The ability to share words today has an immediacy that with less fortunate outcome begins to recognize more an obsession than it does a sweet greeting, wonderment, hello and I wish you might be able to reciprocate my words. It might happen yet too easily our words are lost in the rush of a society too easily drawn by expectation inside the rapid scrutiny of words without inflection or the elegance of time spent in penning the romantic beauty of love.
Oh how I do know love and am grateful to having my muse to share my inner reflections.
© Scott F Savage 2019
Personal Testimony 