The Ties That Remain
A Love Letter
Hello, Love.
This morning, I’m drinking the Russian tea you sent me and reading your latest letter, penned in your flowing Slavic cursive. I can’t help but think that we are broken up and separated yet remain one and the same in our souls, because after the leaving I think on you and my mind still imagines what it would have been like to write a love story together that didn’t involve an ocean between us.
Even among the goodbyes that have been exchanged and the recognition that the odds of the world were stacked up against us, I can’t help but wonder what it would feel like to sense the sudden weight of you as you take a seat on the foot of the bed in which I slumber and put down your heavy work bag and unlace your shoes. I’d hear through my dream the subtle echo of your tired midnight sigh and would know that although you are exhausted from endless phone calls and harshly lit computer screens, you are here and safe. I can’t help but wonder if perhaps, when the sound of air raids ring in your ears, you listen to the booms and hear them call my name across the endless hills and flurries of sand. I light candles after the sun sets because the fire mimics your eyes and I count down the days until you are home safely, even though I don’t want that home to be one that I share.
Good luck in your battles, Love.
May your hand be steady and your mind be focused during the day and your thoughts rest on the story we lived at night. I can’t help but feel like you’re not “The One,” yet you are also one of my great loves in the same elegant bewildering verse. I think it’s because we are meant to live separate lives while building a love story together in a separate plane, free from the constrains of reality and the physical world.
We break and so we end, a split that mimics what has happened on an emotional level. Our entire being shuddered and sighed, and focused on rebuilding the snapped-off pieces. You have one of those pieces placed inside of you, faraway. Perhaps that’s the explanation for my mind that wanders before settling on your face. We took threads in our hands, rainbow-colored and strong but flexible, and created a tie, weaving and braiding.
You are no longer mine, Love, and I am no longer yours. But the ties lovers make are the strongest knots in the world and they continue on, with or without us.
