I slipped between the covers this evening looking forward to restful sleep, yet I couldn’t stop my thoughts from their wanderings.  I can’t seem to get you off my mind.  The deluge of emotions and contemplations threaten to overwhelm me in a torrential flood.  Hopes of excising disruption and finding sleep drove me to write you this note.  Perhaps I may find within these words the escape I so desperately need so that slumber might caress me.

It’s amazing to me, you know, how much our relationship means to me, how much it has guided me to the comfortable path upon which I now journey.  If only there was some way to communicate what I feel without cheapening it with inadequate words and phrases.  Nevertheless, such ineffective ramblings may well be the only outlet available if there is to be any hope whatsoever of finding sleep’s embrace this cold winter evening.

Perhaps what now spills onto this paper is what I should have said to you already and in person.  Immersed in your presence though, I often lose myself, and the breath of life that you give to me overwhelms my senses.  Is it any surprise that I am better able to convey how I feel only in your absence?  Here, away from you, my vision is clearer and my head no longer fogged.

Do you know that when I’m scared of the dark, yours is the hand I want to hold?  That single gesture embraces me in ways I don’t comprehend.  I’m quite certain it would be impossible for me to help you understand how that simple pleasure fills me to the core.  It’s in that embrace I take refuge when the world is crushing in.  I guess that means you’re my very own secret hiding place and the sanctuary wherein I find all consolation and all delight.

I can stand with you in the velvet cloak of darkness and find my way lighted by your presence.  It’s clarity that pierces even the blackest of rainy nights.  Direction never seemed this apparent to me before.  In the place where I question all things, your vividness travels the fine line between vision and blindness.  I find no quarrel with that.

There are times I fail to grasp the comfort of you.  You’re like a warm overcoat, soft and snug protection from the bitter cold, enwrapping me with comfort I enjoy no matter where I am or what I’m doing.  I can lose myself in you.  It’s a wonderful place to be lost.  Therein lies the condition that all beings of consciousness should know: belonging and acceptance and love and joy, yet also challenge that asks of me what might seem impossible only to show me that I can rise on gossamer wings to meet you.  I am a better person for knowing you.

My heart was a parched desert of chaos before our friendship broke out of its husk and turned us into lovers.  I was seeking answers in places wherein they could not be found, unaware that right there in front of me was all that I had been looking for.  When my well finally ran dry, you were the rain that poured down upon me and quenched my thirst.  My wounds were washed clean with your essence, my parched lips wetted upon yours, and I found in you such freedom and ecstasy as I have never known before.  I doubt there is any way I could ever truly communicate what is within my heart.

The cold wind outside rattles against the window and reminds me of the winter upon us.  I see tree branches dancing with the unseen blowing as they are touched by winter’s breathe.  I see in them myself, the me that you found in friendship.  Tossed this way and that way by uncertainty and longing, my searching blinded me to what hid in plain sight.  A single night together while we sat and talked was all that was necessary for you to draw forth my true self.  I remember how my heart leaped in that moment when your words strummed my heartstrings.  The immediate connection was almost silly because it had been there all along.  We needed only to acknowledge its existence and give it room to grow.  How that tiny seed has sprung forth since then.

In the winter of my years, you were the warm breath of spring that ushered in the start of a new season.  I can never repay what you have given.  Words fall limply at your feet with feeble attempts to verbalize what you mean to me and what you have brought into my life.  Most importantly, I doubt there will ever be a time when I can fully demonstrate my appreciation for your help in finding the me I am now, the me that I wish I had been all along.  My life is better because of you.  I can not thank you enough for all that you are and all that you do.  I can’t make clear how much I love you.

[circa 1992]