Love Letter

There is an antique store near old highway 20 and the intersection where all that construction is taking place...you know the one.

Inside in the dusty musk and Coca-Cola sign replicants there is a wall, with frames across it like a museum...varying sizes, shapes and even the wood colors are different.  But inside each is a page from a love letter...the paper turning the color of sand, the ink fading in parts...but goddamn, the words...

The words...

"If I never loved again it is because you were the completest part of me, the skeletal part of me that allowed me to walk this earth, roam an afternoon and be free unlike any time by myself..."

"I close my eyes hurrying myself to sleep, begging and praying for just the slightest chance or even slight perception that I might catch nary a glimpse of you"

"I am far, the furthest I have ever been...closer seemingly to the sun and stars...I see them much brighter now and in the vast amount of darkness and night I cannot believe how ugly they appear when I make the comparison of your countenance...you eclipse even what God has so studiously made."

"I no longer pray for my safe return...I fear it is a faithless prayer and one deemed selfish and willful.  Rather...in any way or capacity, I long to return to you in one form or another...a cold dead man, a wounded hurt person or even a ghost who can occasionally peek and see you...just even briefly...slightly...that is what I now pray for and I feel more comforted...more alive in the hope that that is something the Divine can provide more realistically...and to my benefit."

"I will always seek you in these new crowds, a hint of your sculpture, a color similar in hair...a gait or a gesture remarkable...sometimes it is even a voice, and at other times it is a piano.  I see you in the passers-by, I see you in the puddled streets of rain...I see you in the most common things that are comforting and held in my hands...and maybe I will ultimately find you amongst all the things that remind me of you so that you truly and actually are there."

"I watched two lovers pass by...one could tell...the slight angles towards each other...the casual laughs...the belonging.  I think it is the sense of belonging that binds them that reveals their truest emotion...it is comfort...fitting...key into lock, candle to match...they were useful to each other...making a completely separate one whole...one could tell just by watching them walk.  O I do wish that is how we appear when we glide"

"I don't have a lot of time and am in need of additional ink that I will strive to find upon the next town...it is cold and it is quiet..but in my heart it is emblazoned and beating to a rhythm that I might be dancing...it is the only time because I can stop and provide thoughts to you and my pen quivers because it will do no justice...rather it will be a letter but to me it is fire...it is a glow...it is hot coals and it is warming and I wish I could pen you longer"

"I didn't say I love you enough..not near enough...breakfast, afternoon...I didn't take the time to convey what I was feeling when I awakened and when I closed my eyes...that single rapture presence that you provided and I fear I could return soon and still be in a deficit...so I will try to say I love you a thousand times a day and hope that a wind will pick them up and maybe make its way to you so that when I return I am halfway to telling you that I love you"

"I hear murmurs of a battle tomorrow...I will do my very best and fight alongside some of the bravest men I have ever known...but I will carry your name on my lips and even if light extinguishes in me the very last sound I will utter, with the very last breath in my chest...will be my love for you."

"You have ruined me for love...you have marked me and made me unworthy of anyone else...I will not be able to administer even the slightest affection for even the most sought-after debutante...I am penned and anointed to be yours...even if you dispel me.  Even if shunned I would be forced to walk the earth like Mosley's chains in Dickens with a spell of you upon me...nobody could ever accept me because I would always have you alongside, even if only in my mind...the two of us forever entwined...and no other would be able to bear the crowd of us...you, me...them.  Your ruination is the best thing that has ever happened to me."

I only wish I could convey like those departed souls could correspond.