Night’s shroud of darkness settled upon the world bathing it in shadows deep.  The whole of existence is cloaked in blackness.  The sun’s absence surrounds me as I sit scribbling these words in my notebook.

For some this place seems a lonely place to be.  For me, however, there is no more aloneness in the world even in midnight’s grasp.  Loneliness for me is vanquished now, pursued from the four corners of existence unto extinction.  I have you to thank for that.

You see through my heart’s camouflage, your gaze burning through to the core of my soul.  What then can I hide from you?  I revel in the awkward tension between us, the knowing of one another, the constant desire.  Writing this becomes increasingly difficult because my spirit bathes in the river of you.  I lose myself that way, but you already know that I suspect.

My body wades into that river of thought.  I follow as you glide breathlessly through the torrent and stand comfortably on the other shore, there directly across from and facing me.  Your silhouette is enticing, strong and sturdy in the darkness, perhaps the only light that shines without blinding.

I tell myself I will be all right and that everything is going to work out.  I think I will see the light and be refreshed and empowered to triumph.  In your presence, all these things are true.

Sometimes I think I know what love is all about.  You would call me predictable in that sense.  You would say it was a neon sign declaring my want to know everything.  You are laughing now, are you not?  We are so predictable that way, I guess, so omniscient about each other, so engrained in each other.  You know everything I plan to say before I think of saying it.

I have plenty of friends in the world.  Boygirls and girlboys love me and I love.  I lost friends too, but who has not?  I miss some, regret others, and even rue the day I met a few.  The love I share with the most important of them bathes me in warmth even during the coldest of winter days.

Unlike some, although I won’t say many, I struggle with my family.  I love them deeply.  I also resent some of them, but not always and not all of them and not all the time.  I don’t know why I struggle with some of them.  Fret drives the knife deep when trouble beseeches us, and family knows enough to be terribly hurtful even when it’s not intentional.  Yet from them I also know love.  It is different than the love we share, yes, and it is classed unto that river wherein beloveds swim without truly getting wet.

What we have is something else entirely, a love born from passion and sacrifice, a lust that gives rise to desires that can never be fulfilled in the eyes of others.  Yet I know love.  Just from these two I would say yes.  It runs deep within my bones when shared with them.  But is that enough?  And is it the crux?

I hear your voice talking to me even now.  I know deep down inside that you too are among the loved and loving in my life.  Your voice says you know, but I must be sure you understand what I feel transcends what has come before, what I thought I knew about love.

The secrets of life seem to unfurl when I’m with you.  It’s more than magic.  I often think it borders on sensory overload.  My heart is blinded by your presence, drawn to that place between us that feels of home, that place where I never feel aloneness, that river whose rapids engulf me with tumultuous safety.

It’s there I close my eyes and live life more fully.  Today is all I have to work with; you fill them so that they overflow and tomorrow becomes a promise fulfilled before it arrives.  Right now may be all I ever have, and if so I will accept it, but you are who I ought to be with and around, and making that so entrenches my being in the whole of happiness.

There’s nothing to lose when I’m with you.  There’s everything to gain when I’m not.  You make my head spin and my heart sing, and it’s as easy as a glance or as complex as an embrace.  A simple word from you is always enough.  The communion of our thoughts is sometimes more than I can take, yet the overwhelming nature of our connection calls me back time and again.  It’s impossible to count the times I find myself standing at the banks of your essence wishing nothing more than to dive in and become lost in your currents.

I’ve discovered a new freedom with you, a part of me I denied for so long, and I wish it had always been so in the hopes that we might have met sooner than we did.  I know it’s silly of me to think that someone changed me.  Or, if not silly, at least over-empowering.  You see, I didn’t change in response to your manipulation.  Instead, I changed because I realized I was meant to be who I am when I’m with you.  That person, that abomination in the eyes of others that I have denied for so long, is my normal.  You helped me find it, free it, and live it.  It now feels so comfortably when I wear it that I feel naked without it.

In your arms, I am blinded to the world at large, and in your presence, I am overwhelmed by what life should be.  Someone is talking to me right now.  It’s you, and it’s so lyrical.  I hear the voice calling my name, telling me I’m loved, telling me not to be ashamed of who I am, telling me that who I am is more beautiful than the façade, making certain that I know the mask of life I wear is unnecessary and unwarranted.  I finally understand the shame I’ve worn for too long and why it’s a burden I need not carry.

I can’t keep my eyes off you when I’m in your presence.  You’re beautiful and magical to behold.  My eyes fill with you from head to toe, locked in a dance intending to consume your very essence in vision, called forth to caress the sight of you with tenderness.  I cannot look upon you without falling prey to you.  How often have I said that I could stare at you for hours without getting my fill and how often have I done just that?  You are the secret place to which I go.

I’m tripping on my own words.  You’ve come to understand that what I want to say never comes out right when I’m around you.  That’s why I’ve written this letter, and even in that regard I could not master the text without succumbing to your existence in my mind and heart, finding myself overcome with passion at the thought of you.  What day is it?

The world now moves differently for me.  I wish I could explain it.  I can’t.  Who I am with you is different from who I have been.  He’s a stranger I’ve never known, one who feels happy and enjoys who he’s with, and I like that person.  You blind me to the great many woes I have carried with me through life.  You enable my escape in that way.  I’m never certain anymore about what is and isn’t, for most other things disappear in your presence, whether they be concerns or people.  It all rushes by in a blur as I’m carried in your embrace between the river’s banks.

You see, it’s you and me and the rest of the world.  I can conquer it with you.  Threats don’t carry the weight they once did.  Through your eyes, it’s all manageable.  Through your eyes, so many of my own blemishes disappear.  Everyone should experience this place.  I can’t believe that living could ever be as good as it is here, as it exists because of us.

I would thank you if it didn’t cheapen it in some way.  Gratitude is insufficient, emotionally haphazard even.  The aura of encompassing love is sufficient unto itself, methinks, yet it seems too small a gift to bestow upon you.  Would that I possessed something of greater value to share with you and to gift upon you as thanks, but I have no such belonging, yet no part of me believes it insufficient to offer myself.  I am all I have to give.  The compassion you show me says that is more than enough while I myself do not understand how.

True love lasts forever.  It is with you I will know that universal truth in its most complete beauty.  Now, let me wade into you and swim in your arms.

[circa 1987]