A Letter to a French Singer | heartache
how I wish to send a letter to you, but alas, I cannot read or write French.
Dear,
How I wish to send a letter to you, but alas, I cannot read or write French. And yet you have affirmed again and again that language does not really matter in the greater scope of emotion. Why, your voice is enough to evoke what words cannot: that sort of porousness I sometimes feel on the tidal rocks upon which the salty tides confide against, embrace and merge into one undulating whole, scattering the foam about and rolling hither and thither. There is a slight undertow in all the words; a little tremble that makes my heart sink just a little deeper into my chest.
I watched you play the harp once, and my eyes caught not the movement of the eyes nor the slight lilting of the head, but of your fingers. You clasped the instrument like a lover, and you sung lullabies to it; all along with eyes slightly closed, fluttering. They were bird-like, your musician’s hands: delicate and light, surprisingly supple yet strenuous in flight. You were in a chapel, I think. You would play the notes and look up, almost as if the sounds from that instrument could life you upward, through the iridescent ceiling-glass and into the flock high above. I was convinced you were a starling, a beautiful, elegant and passionate songbird. There was a gentleness radiating, a gentleness so unearthly but so heartbreaking. I asked my windowsill birds about you that night, and they looked at me for a second: almost in affirmation, then flew off into the trees.
I tried to converse with the lyrics, but they always sounded stranded under my pen. My pages were not their home: they belong in places where people live, where buses travel and where the brightest lights mock the moon. Are you their guide?
I admire your ease, I adore your sober tones. My heart speaks to your heart. It is beneath the conscripted cage of flesh and blood pumping, that a surging pulse of wind buffers the ocean waves. I then imagine us all as stormbound ships: little wooden ones with worn cambric sails and paddles. I am wrecked on the shore, but you were born to sing in that storm.
Must cruel fate forever divide us? Is there no chance of a glance or a wave or a call-note? I suppose so. But I know your personage is forever imprinted into my mind. Like the scent that lingers in the air after rain, or the trail left in water or the impression in space after you have been and gone; the smell of someone’s perfume.
Walking away now, you are. Like a shot of whiskey; hearty, neat and strong. So full of purpose. I am rooted forevermore, no longer flowing. How I wish to fly.
Sometimes it is in these unsaid words that the submerged truth comes to the top. So it seems like I must always write you letters I will never send.
your murmuration must be calling.
of all those, it was relief to meet you in this life,
i don’t want to end this, but I only drag on now,
i wish you well for your tour in a summer’s time.
-another little birdie
