Hold My Hand and We'll Leap off the Edge of the World

Dear Erika.

It’s our last night.  And it’s just like I imagined it would be.  Damp, heavy, a deep silver everywhere, like the skin of a snow-covered field at dusk, or light spinning through an icicle.  The stars tear through the sky in pen streaks, some dripping, some hollow.  A breeze sweeps through the everywhere above us, kissing the leaves, dancing with the trees, like the dying breath of an old man on a porch swing holding the ghost of his only lover. 

I stretch my toes and feel the sweating grass and the wet dirt.  I stretch my hand and feel your body, light, delicate, trembling. I stretch my heart and everywhere, from the kid in me who still loves sandcastles, to the callous side that wants it all to go away, to the hurt that fears a night without you, and to the temple where I’ve saved all your words,  I feel you.

And I’m trying for something to say, something that might let you through this open door to find the constellation I’ve painted of you, love, in a red wine sky.  But it’s hard.  It’s hard because I’m so in love with you and I have so many things I want to say, so many dreams I want to share with you, and so many hopes I pray might come true, but I don’t know where to begin and I don’t want it to sound like hail against pavement.  If I tell you I love you, and that you’re body feels like the ocean, and that your eyes remind me of a rising sun, and that I could gradually fade away and grow old with you, I want it to be perfect.

And words won’t do.  Not when I’m this far down, not when I’m this deep into you.  Nothing will do.  Nothing outside of you and I buried into one another, miles under a black canvas laced with stars, where only two hearts beat, like children stepping through a shallow stream hand in hand, and shatter the silence, and we make godless love forever.

I roll over so I can see you curve in the darkness and watch the moonlight in your eyes gather like autumn-colored sea water, or puddles of honey.  You smile and the blood rushes to your lips, I can feel them blossom and grow rich as a fevered rose, and you know I’m watching you.

And I remember when we first met.  You acted like I wasn’t there.  And I wasn’t.  I was far away scooping up the universe so I could barter with memory and forget everything but you.  I knew then it would be the last time I’d ever fall in love. 

How could I ever fall in love again?

You were a garden and I was just a desert and you were brilliant and I was dull and you walked with candles for footsteps and I crept around in chains and when everything collapsed into black and white there you were, a Goya, dressed in color.

And I love how you tiptoe across my body with your fingers and laugh at my terrible jokes.  And I love when we’re awkward and we dance in gritty parking lots to my favorite band and we damn it all and fall asleep like bohemian romantics on a train at midnight.  And I love how you’re obsessed with grape soda and you blow red lights because you’re caught up in the turning world and you make faces on the highway.  And I love how you strip and dive into the ocean and I love how you cry behind a locked door and I pass you childish love notes and I love how you blush and hide your eyes when I say I love you.  But more than anything, I love how you love me. 

Do you remember when I told you I’d push you off the edge of the world and leap off after you?  You told me it would be alright, but you preferred it if we held hands and jumped.  I wrote those words on my guitar so that every time I slip my pain and passion and thoughts and whys into those bone strings I can remember that with you it’ll all be alright.

And I know that even if we fall apart and you love another man, I’ll still have this moment, the now, the one of you, the calm after the storm, a goddess on a marble canvas, a twisting sun in a stained glass window, and me, falling deep, deep in love for the first and last time.  And I hope that sixty years from now it’ll still be us, scarred, tired, our shadows long, the end so near, holding one another on the porch swing of our house with our children gone to carve their own romance.  And I know that when death comes, like a first kiss in a forgotten orchard, you will reach for my hand, and together, we’ll leap off the edge of this world.