Dear Matthew, II

A followup.

Dear Matthew,

I have written and rewritten this, 

Discarding old sentiments and attempting to process thoughts as they come like gunfire,

Interchanging hope and miracles and love

And attempting to craft a response

And, for reasons unbeknownst to me, my mind immediately went to the place mentioned before.

The first time I went there, you immediately came to my mind.

I thought of Pete, alone on his bench,

I thought of Ginette, first alone across the world, then returning to her home beside the one she loved.

I thought of you-

About as literally and figuratively out of reach as you could have been, at the time.

And this place I deemed so incredible

I looked around it a bit

Still planted to the ground

And I tried to envision you and I

Two young people

Sitting and laughing, almost buried in the snow.

And the place became more than beautiful-

It was magical.

I visited again today

A day after receiving your email

To make sure that this place was just as beautiful as I had written and remembered it to be.

Like everything in nature, it had changed

But it had changed in ways nature cannot touch

In ways of love, most simply

And I could only imagine you there

And laugh to myself 

To think that my old hopes for such a place were suddenly a reality

Quicker than I could have ever dreamed

And it was playing "Evermore" for the 15th time

Tripping over brush and ice that I realized 

That I had not actually answered your question

The one that you had sent and written so beautifully

But there are places so serene that you cannot worry within them

And in one of them, I grinned and shouted to the heavens

"YES!"

The word echoed through the brisk morning air

Bouncing off of trees and clouds and power lines

Swarming my heart and encapsulating the fantastical reality that I somehow have lived

Sending repetition of the same joyous word 

I uttered it, spinning and falling on the ice
Believing, almost knowing I could run the miles it would take to see you

And share with you this commonplace yet beautiful word I have almost rediscovered-

YES!

Yours evermore,

Madeleine

Author's Note

this isn't very well thought out, but again, it needed to be said, and I sincerely hope that come Monday I can speak.