White Butterfly

Dear Kylie,

 

I hope this letter finds you well. Today was a gentle day; I woke up with no headaches. And I watched a white butterfly fly next to me as I walked back home from my training. Its little white wings brought a smile to my lips.

 

However, I'm embarrassed to say that I did rush to look at your page the first thing in the morning.

 

You still write beautifully; your emotions palatable and real, yet they are like a cloud I could pass my fingers through.

 

I have yet to reach the other side of fear, my love. I'm on the way. And I don't expect the journey to ease nor do I hope to see carpets of green grass unrolled by

my feet.

 

All I hope for is more faith. Strength. I have already gathered my self-respect and humbleness together in order to write to you.

 

And everyday I tell myself that it is more than enough. You had already said that you had forgiven me. You have moved gracefully from my world to the next. Your summer mornings are rich in giggles and flushed cheeks and sweet dizziness over the thoughts of being in your lover's arms. And here I am still stuck on that bridge where we had briefly locked eyes. I am still lost in that blue in your irises. 

At that moment, had there been cars and planes and parades colliding into one another behind me, wrecking one another, I would have been oblivious.

 

I tell myself everyday that you will never again look in my direction. And I tell myself everyday that all the stories I long to share with you will remain on my desk, striped papers staring back at me at night and asking me to whom they would be sent instead?

 

I'm learning, but it's not easy, love. My father told me once that even after we had been brought up within certain expectations, norms, traditions and habits, we can still be our own parents; we can raise ourselves or let ourselves down. Conditioning and society or religion should not be responsible for our failures to become better versions of ourselves.

 

Therefore, I kindly teach the little girl in me that it is perfectly alright to desire love from those who will never return it to us. And it is alright to linger longer in our own worlds, sulking, daydreaming and writing about it.

 

Kylie, I had a dream about you a few weeks ago. We walked together along a bright landscape and I interrupted our conversation when my eyes wandered and wondered.

You asked me if I had ever seen red and orange sands before.

 

"No. I've only seen dry mud close to that color."

 

I am beginning to think it was a place of your choice during that spiritual encounter. It was dry like the desert. But the sun was not unkind.

 

Where did you take me that day?

 

~Rain.