Lost love: A letter to the three of you

The Memories:

H,

I remember the first day you brought me to the farm.  You had work to do.  I sat on the wraparound porch that overlooked the chicken house and I watched you carry buckets of dirt to the garden.  Your arms were strong and wet from the heat.  I could see the curves in them; your limbs were tight from the weight of the buckets.  Your fingers were turning red and white wrapped around two thin metal handles.  It looked like your hands might slip but you made yourself hold on.  That was the first time, I was surprised to find, I loved you.

Y,

Your face is my sharpest memory.  The day after I met you I was working in the office where you kept your microphone.  I was eating a banana and wishing for coffee.  I hated your country.  The people were tricky and they only drank tea.  But that didn’t matter now.  The food was a distraction.  I was waiting for you.  That morning I saw you through the window.  You looked at me and smiled bashfully and I could not believe that you could be nervous. You laughed a little.  The blackness of your beard made your teeth almost shine and I saw the little boy that you had once been.  I wanted to touch you.  You were no boy.  Ten hours ago you’d made me weak with your honesty.  Your fearlessness made me tremble.  I wasn’t afraid; It was your power that weakened me.  It made me feel more woman than I had ever been.  And I knew you were wrong to think that I was anything worthy of your shyness. 

M,

I hadn’t noticed you at first; not when we’d climbed the ridge behind your house.  Our words seemed empty then.  But one night we’d built a fire and under the stars I began to know you.  I woke up next to you with the alarm.  The sun was coming through the blinds.  Your room was white, like sand.  And I was happy.   You stretched out without making a noise and looked up at the ceiling and smiled.  I wondered what you saw there.  I let the sheets fall off of me with your movement.  And I hoped I looked beautiful.  I studied your chin and followed its curve towards your eyes.   There was magic there.  We didn’t say anything.  The air was full already. 

After the Divorce:

M,

You always scared the hell out of me.  It took some time to allow myself to love you.  I don’t love you anymore and so your letter stops here.  It’s a failing on my part.  Or maybe on time’s.  I didn’t know you long enough before you shut me out.  And now everything you say looks like charm.  I am not angry;  only disenchanted.    

Y,

You killed the fear in me when I was with you.  It was our discovery of the eternal; a current of divine honesty that we put first, before each other.   I was not afraid to leave you but when I did I split in two.  I was a being full of longing.  I slithered on my belly through desire, in search of your voice where I knew I’d find myself and the reasons we could not be would make sense again.  And then I was love.  I was whole and unafraid.  I was what I was with you, but all on my own.  I could not figure out which being was more honest.  What intelligence would win if I remained patient?   In the end I heard your voice and I remembered what I’d learned from you.  You still make me better, every day.    

H,

I love you more than lovers love.  Nothing can go deeper.  There was a time after our separation when I felt nothing.   All day I saw you in my mind.  I am not sure if I saw your name or your face or your outline.  All three seemed put together, but undefined.  You stayed there relentlessly; a heavy mist that I grew use to, like the burden of a damaged limb.  Sometimes I felt anger.  I could not believe I hated you.  I wanted to be better.  I still believed in my childhood eyes. They trust storybook heroes; the ones that love despite all hardship.  What was the point of ever having loved you if my scares could not be beautiful?  But that was hard to realize.  

What Now:

H,

Love in the hands of fools is not love at all.  And so we all, being fools by birth, must be persistent.  I have decided to love you every day forever.  No matter what it costs me, it gives me more.  I have always been taught that we stop loving at “goodbye”.  But I have learned through your light that true love is immortal.  And I will be good.  I will not waste time being anything less lovely than what 5 year old me expected of the world.  Some people think that being jaded is wise.  They have not been looking deeply.  I could fail you and hate you instead.  I could let you wash away from the shores of my consciousness.  I could let you go and choose to dream instead of live.  But I will not do those things.  I am not holding onto you here in this world.  But I will let love be immortal.  I will let it be what it already is.