A letter.

My own love,

I had to write you.  If I face you and say what needs saying I’ll fall, and perhaps never get up.

Firstly, you are my all.  You know that and always have, since our first night over the river.  My skin sang for you, and in those moments and every moment from then, your words and your song have been etched into me.  Time has sunk the etchings deep into my skin, but they’re still there. Young we may have been, but that doesn’t lessen in any way the wondrous unravelling that knit my soul to yours. 

Each summer on your return those silk stitches tightened, layered and fused my heart to you.  I basked in you, content to see through another winter because you’d be back; another evening barbecue with the whole town turned out and I’d see your father first, cutting his swathe through the crowd to be greeted, his boys trailing behind with playfighting and shy grins.  We’d take all night to find courage to talk, even after hours of looks and longing.  But after that, our arms, hips and lips coaxed symphonies from each other each night for a week or more.

That fourth summer when you didn’t appear behind your father scythed my feet from under me.  I heard talk of you living in the city, finding your way, and never – not once – did I hear it from you.  I worked every hour I could that summer, always in town; at the Shindig, the store, the grain market, always this side of the river so the golden fields wouldn’t tug at me and break me in two all over again.

Others tried, through that year and the next, to convince me things would be good, that they could love me.  It never worked; how could it when the heart they sought was already miles away in your pocket?

Did you think of me then?  Did you ever wish you were back in the fields, back in the old Johnston haybarn, just for a moment?  Did any part of you hurt, feel like it was missing something? 

While I’ve only ever wanted happiness, health love and luck for you, I’ve ached for you to have some taste of what those months felt like for me; not knowing if lying with your arm draped over my waist, your gentle breath on my neck, the taste of sun-warmed beer still on my tongue as the birds played above us was the only real love I’d know.  I felt, simply, like the purest, most joyful and vital part of me had closed itself in a leaden box and left the key to the ether.  When you didn’t return that following summer either, that part was not just locked away anymore, it died; swiftly, in the night, as if it had known what would happen all along, it just died.

People heard things about you and your brothers; you travelled, saw places I’d barely imagined, only read about.  You were making music I heard, in a bigger way – not just singing those bluegrass standards we’d wail laughingly in the fields.  People didn’t shy from telling me things, they couldn’t have known what we’d had and so thought nothing of it.  Oddly, seeing you making your way in that world didn’t hurt – I don’t think there was anything left to hurt in that way about you anymore.

Adam started his campaign in earnest towards Christmas that second year.  I’d known him for years through school, obviously.  He was sweet, lots of the town’s girls liked the look of him, good job, decent parents, always steady, that kind of thing.  I let it all happen, there was no reason not to; after a while with all the right words that were nothing like yours, he told me he loved me and asked me to marry him.

After that, I had a life again.  I went out, joined in, smiled, laughed and forgot, sometimes, the pain your absence had caused.  Feeling empty became second nature and I was good at it, even great at it.  Days lying on the wheat and nights lying in the barn were as if they’d happened to someone else, somewhere else.  You were simply a guy I used to know who’d made something of himself.

Another barbecue rolled around a week ago, the town falling over itself unhurriedly to celebrate nothing in particular, just each other’s company, as usual.  The sun setting, the birds calling and the kids laughing and shouting, and some hollering as old faces arrived as new.  That swathe cut through at the foot of the hill and your father stepped forward, hugged and backslapped, his boys trailing behind, no playfighting any more but still the shy grins. 

You were back, and I fell and couldn’t breathe, forgot to breathe.  Adam caught me before I hit the stone seat behind me, and looking down the hill, he knew.  After all this time, he knew and everything made sense to him.

Did you come back with a small hope that you’d see me? Did you hope I’d moved on?  Did you hope I’d be free to be yours again?  Or did you not think of me at all?  I want to know and don’t all at the same time.  I’m frightened that if I let any part of me truly see you again, I’ll be back there when you leave, back in that tiny leaden box with no way of coming out.  And yet I can’t see you without hearing my skin scream to touch yours, to have you around me and inside me on that blanket in the barn, to have your blue green eyes swallow my heart.  So I sit here, and think only of what it might feel like to be yours again; what it might do to my older, wiser soul to let you own it again.

Adam knows what this has done.  He broods, he’s waiting for something.  I don’t know what, and I can’t tell him what it might be as I can’t bring myself to see you, much less speak to you.  All he’s aware of is that I fell the instant I saw you, fell physically – people don’t do that, mostly they’re quite good at concealing things, and I have been, for a long time.  It takes quite something to make a person fall.  You’re quite something.

I don’t know if I’ll send you this letter - I should as it might explain why I haven’t caught up with you.  I’ve seen you in town, and changed as I am, I’ve shrunk back out of sight to avoid being close, to avoid the silence from your skin while mine screams at you.  I have to send you this, you have to tell me if you’ve thought of us. Of the days and nights that my eyes, my arms, my heart, my soul, my entire person belonged to you and always would.  Always will.

If you’re going to leave again, and feel all these things with another someone, I’ll not expect to see you.  Just write me something, and make it distant, I beg you.  Otherwise, you know where to find me.


Yours always.