11th of june, ’24
It is finally your birthday, my dearest love! It is finally the day I can see you once more. I have no idea how to write the final letter—I want it to be perfect for your day. Please forgive me if it’s not in your expectations.
But hey, there’s a kind of time travel in love letters, isn‘t there? i imagine you laughing at my small joke; i imagine you groaning; i imagine you throwing my words away. do i have you still?
I cannot help if love has been redefined to mean you.
I was never made for something good, for someone like you. I was made for destruction; to leave nothing but agony. Is loving you and deciding to keep you close to me something I should kneel in front of the Gods and repent for? Forgive me for I have sinned. Forgive me for wanting something I cannot have - for wanting to be loved.
But now when love comes up in conversation, I think of your smile: ever so gentle, ever so fond as you listen intently—a look that could only whisper 'I love you, please talk to me about everything on your mind; I could listen to you for as long as you will let me.' Your eyes come into mind, two shooting stars with my heart as their eternal landing place. Both of them look on so brightly with fondness (forgive me if I can’t stop looking—what is an ardent admirer to do if not commit you to memory?). A gaze so affectionate; it could almost leave soft kisses on the cheeks of your loved ones.
People say that before you love someone: "You should learn how to love yourself first, in order for you to love them fully" But when i met you, I forgot how loathing myself feels like— you taught me how to love, in different ways.
Love comes in conjunction with how your hands carry with them the weight of love, my little star. It starts from the way you pass on the love you have by reaching out and feeling the warmth that emanates from the palm of the other. How your hands set out to give even just the most imperceptible of squeezes: a quiet gesture that speaks volumes (I hear your heart say, 'I know, I see you, I am here with you do you feel me here too?).
Imbued with love in every fragment of your being, perhaps you were created with precisely that as your core-perhaps it is what binds you together to be the lover that you are.
Love (you) is also conveyed in the shape of you coming home late at night or in the midst of your hectic day, and your foremost thought is to stop by and say, 'good night' or 'I love you' or 'the weather is nice, so I miss you more’. Time is both fleeting and finite, but love is found in how you always choose to share a little slice of it with me, however briefly. Love as I now define it is how you choose to carry your camera around with you, little memory maker. How you share your little snippets of life so excitedly, it pours over to me as well. I know love too now, for it is palpable in your every shot-how dear those moments must have been for you to store them in little frames for moons to come (I will keep them with me too).
Love exudes from every fibre of yours; an indication of how deeply ingrained it is in your being, how natural it must be to you (akin to how natural it is for the sun to shine, for the stars to twinkle, for the rain to fall upon the earth as it always does this time of year).
Perhaps you have been a lover from the moment you took your first breath, and you will be a lover up until your last. Maybe it is as simple as remembering that as long as I can know you, I will know love.
You mean love, and love, in return, means you (all of you, every part of you is love).
Yet, I am here, in front of you: with bleeding lips, swollen-tear-stained cheeks, and bruised knees. I speak your name like how I recite the names on the bible, your fingers going through my body like how you skip pages, and how you have to wet your fingers in between. God, this isn’t the heaven my mother told me about-this is so much better.
yours truly,
your kade.
