to us, beaten raw
I write to you from my home in the sunlight beside my window. Last night you trusted me with a part of yourself that you fear holding up to the light, one that controls you from the darkest parts of your mind. My heart breaks and breaks and breaks again to have my suspicions confirmed. I will not pity you and I will speak of it no further than these writings.
I fought myself for some months about putting pen to paper, but I know you are a creature of small sentiments like me. I always fawn over your hidden sweetnesses. That's the real you in there—gentle and unafraid somewhere at the eye of the storm.
You are so beautiful there that I weep to imagine you. The smile in your eyes, the light feeling in your heart making warmth around you. Sometimes I see him in real life, the very sky undressed.
I am learning my holy mission through love—through patience and devotion and hunger and thirst. It is for righteousness, perhaps. I often find myself thankless, but blessed. I wish the same (if not more) for you. I wish you ease through love.
I have always wanted to give to you this warmth, to experience the same that you coveted behind jaded sneers and cutting eyes. Raw hearts to the glass now, you and me. Bleeding and never to merge, but warm, and together. Take enough of my world to make it in yours. Stare at me long enough that you can close your eyes and see my ghost in your kitchen.
In the past, in the future—we're laughing.
Thank you. I love you. I'm here for you always. No matter how much shame may choke you. No matter the feelings of the world. There is no love like mine, and you have it. Never fear to call on me because I await you patiently and forever.
When you think yourself ready, I will bring you to find you out there—in all the last places I seen you—in the marsh at low tide, in the glade behind the amphitheatre, over the empty moat by the fort, at the end of the gravel driveway, there in the red Camry (the same one), in my room at the foot of my bed, across from me in a dream, here safe in my heart the whole time.
Do not forget me. My only request. If I am to die, you are entitled to a rib of your choosing—a memento of the cage I kept you in all my life. With it you may call on me still. I can love you still, even then.
I pray you're able to keep these pages, but I know your afflictions and do not hate you for any at all. If you dispose of them, let them be burned and the arsonist blessed for every earnest word.
I go forward to the future where our greatest joys might be found, no matter what they are. I hope to find you. I can hear your laugh.
K.