Do you remember the nights we spent filling each other up?

You, eating my sleep as a feast.

And me, filling with your exhaustion.

Draining and bursting.

Bite down on the flesh of my dreams one last time?

Let me dig my teeth into your late nights?

Swallow down your slumber as you inhale my evening repose.

I know you’re starving, love.

So am I.

All of my love,

your sleepless nights

Dear Liz,

I know this letter will never gets officially delivered to your doorstep, before your warm heart and feet leave your home.

The content inside the crisp white sealed envelope, which was carefully crafted and folded may not hold anything newer or surprising. But rather, another foolishness plea, just like all my previously rendered letters to you, which entailed my deepest and true affirmation of how much I’m still in love with you.

I’ve told myself many times to move on and pretend that nothing has ever happened between us. I wish I could force my heart to turn from fire to ice in a blink of an eye, because every time your name rings in my ears, my heart rate always becomes abnormal. Maybe, this organ of mine is still numb, and has a tenacity of handling some more of those bruises and scars of yours.

As I contemplate with what my future might hold, I yet came to realize that we’re not warranted obtaining everything our hearts desire.

I guess that’s how life goes!

Yours Truly,

MI

2-1-2019

Green was never my favorite color

Until I looked into your eyes

I heard what you said to me

And I saw no lies

You tried to put on a brave face

But I saw through the disguise

You don't always have to be strong

It's okay to show a weaker side

I have your back

Through thick and thin

I always have and I always will

Until the very end.

Blue was always my favorite color

That was the one before you

All that brough was pain and suffering

And I never thought that love could be true

We've never even met

But I still know you're the one

People wonder if you're a threat

But I know that can't be true

I look at you and I'm home

There's nothing else to do.

Just friends

Is all we'll ever be

Just friends

You and me

People thought we were dating

I wanted to

But I'd rather be

"Just friends"

Than lose you.

My love,

It's morning my love, and as I lay in the cool dark silence of my room I think of you. Still a habit, I reach for you in the night. Loving how you reached back, I wanted to be sure you knew how I searched for you, even in my sleep. Hearing your sigh in my ear and the wrinkle of the sheets as you rolled close once again would bring the slightest grin to my face. The heat of your breath on my neck was like feeling a spring sun when my hair was tied up while working in the garden. I loved the warmth and familarity of the moment and the scent of you that whispered by, while you slowly breathed in the air between us.

The first looks of the morning were the purest and most joyful. To be able to wake next to you everyday was the greatest gift. To speak my first words every morning to you helped me to begin the day with peace and happiness. The comfort of the simple things were never missed.

I believed they'd last forever. I believed they were what would sustain us. They'd get us through everything and anything. I never doubted they'd be enough. Our love was strong and resilient. Our passion eclipsed even the brightest light...until it didn't.

The sudden and stabbing anguish of loss stole all the light. Darkness crept through every fiber of my being. There were places that were so inky and slick that I could only fall into their depths and struggle to find a handhold to pull myself free before I drowned. When I'd rise again I felt the filth of depression and the depths of despair. I couldn't wash myself clean of it all no matter how I scrubbed. My skin raw and red I still slipped to the floor of the shower, looking for some way to feel free of this persistent gray world I'd found myself in.

I miss you every day, and sometimes do not know why you don't hear me calling. How can you not hear my cries for help? I need you to reach for me and draw me to you so I can find my breath and feet again. If I but had them, I know I'd be able to find you.

I miss you forever...

I imagine that

if I touched it

it would be softer

than the smoothest silk

or velvet

I have ever known

and if it touched

my cheek

it would be

more gentle

than a warm breeze

or the sun’s rays

caressing my cheek.

I imagine that

if I held it in my own

it would be softer

than a newborn’s foot

and sweeter than

a first kiss.

I steal covetous glances

and imagine

caresses that

will never be

and I feel the

forlorn absence of

something

I will never know.

I imagine that

if I pressed it

to my heart

you would feel

my thoughts

and laugh

or run.

I still feel it

the way the day crawls towards evening

the slow, steady pull of the hours towards the close of the day

and the days they roll on

these days away from you

I hear every day

the echoes of all the words I never said

those charged silences as we felt each other slip away

away from foolish hope

away from what we cherished

I feel you near

my heart breathes life into your memory

your absence like a shadow that clings to me daily

so far apart and yet

together until the end

Can’t I be her?

I wanted to become the seas,

in which you

come for comfort,

to drink and drown

your tears

caring a thousand

and one stories

to store each

and every one and

treasure them.

I wanted to became the rain,

in which you

come for comfort,

to cry with you

to hide your tears and

conceal your broken form

from the outside world,

the drum of the rain

draining out the noise in the

distance,

the whispers that you hate

and let you dance,

and be free.

I wanted to be the sky

that you walk under

that brings the light

in your day

spilling rich honey

on your path

I wanted to...

become your

world

but it seems like

you found

your own world already

and, it seems like

I was just

a drop of water

in your world,

that tear you shed out of pity

drowned

in

her

seas

oh, still dreaming & wishing

i wanted to be...

Remember that night when we met under the moonlight

shivering under a cold breeze

but warm with happiness

we laughed and joked for an hour or two,

me hopping on my bare feet to escape the cold

and you telling me

to go back inside where it was warm

but I wouldn’t leave

and I never told you that it was because

I was warmer

with you.

❤

Rather than “kissing and telling”, I will instead pass along a love letter stolen from literary antiquity. This “letter” is actually a poem penned from a father to his recently deceased daughter. The poem’s clarity comes both from its simpleness, and from its depths of sadness, at least to me. You may judge for yourself.

As you might have suspected, my Prose.com username derives from Huckleberry Finn. I have loved Tom and Huck’s adventures for as long as I can remember. I read them at first simply for the tales. It was years later that I realized the literary significance of, “Huck’s Adventures”. I was drawn more to Tom Sawyer as a boy, mainly because I did not like the name “Huckleberry”. Shallow, of me, huh? But Huck and Jim, as happens to readers, eventually stole my heart, and now also my name.

I have since read everything “Twain”. I feel I have come to know him through the years, from his lonesome “a-wandering” days to his aged, downright ornery end. I have to admit, when I read his hate spewed, complaint filled autobiography, I was disappointed... “here was my hero?“ He even willed that it not be released for one hundred years post mortum, so that he could freely lambast those who annoyed him. Not nice! This cantankerousness perplexed me for years, but when I found this poem, I felt I had a clue to his angst. The words have helped me to understand, and forgive, not “Mark Twain”, but the Samuel Clemens living the real life beneath the unruly hair, the mustache, and the cheap cigar.

I GOOGLE’d Mark Twain poetry a few years ago. It struck me odd that I had never seen any poems from him while his contemporaries all had published works. Poetry was the preferred writing style of his day. Google did display a handful of poems, this one amongst them. I could not remember having seen any of them before. Neither do I recall this poem from his longer works (I may be wrong). I think I would have remembered it, as I have a love of words that won’t let me forget them:

Warm summer sun,

Shine kindly here,

Warm southern wind,

Blow softly here.

Green sod above,

Lie light, lie light.

Good night, dear heart,

Good night, good night.

This poem, these letters of love, should not be so rare.

Dear Ryan,

I wonder about you sometimes. We were childhood crushes, friends, the oddballs of our classes. We walked home together, every day, and hung out despite the weather's goals. But then you moved away, and I didn't hear from you for a solid year. We talked on and off after that; the periods inbetween growing more and more.

Ever since then, I can't help wonder about you and where you are in the world. Now and then I try to find you, but I always fail. You were troubled, had your issues in life, and I feel I've betrayed you. It worries me at times, to think something awful found you.

You were my first love in life, and though we were only nine, ten, it felt real. I thought once we would be together forever, and yet the distance grew and grew. I did find another, years after we last spoke, and I couldn't imagine life without him. I guess fate had different plans for us in the end.

I hope you found that somewhere in your life. You deserve it after all. And I pray it took your darkness away, or at least, keeps it calm.

The white teddy bear you gave me, I held on to for years. I kept it in the same box, and held it sadly from time to time. It reminded me of the first time I saw you, introduced to my fourth grade class. I think I wrote something to welcome you, but the memory is vague now. In fact, that time is only remembered in bits and pieces of silliness, but it still brings a smile to my face.

Anyways, if this somehow finds you, please reach out. I would like to know you're still okay, and that love found you, too.

Fond Regards,

Kelsey E.