Dear ,

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I gaze with pleasure at your flower, the first and last of my gifts. Stunted in her infancy, she had wilted before she would bloom.

 

Such is my misfortune: to want all, but to be satisfied with none; to swear restraint, but to strive otherwise. Never mind that it depletes me, poisons me; I have grown comfortable in the dull and lulling ache of our stagnancy. And I would tell you, but the words wilt, too, before they take form.

 

And so begins the age-old battle between my obstinate pride and my overwhelming want, and I am sometimes angry with myself – where goes Self Respect, the very armor that has propped me up for all my frail years? Why do I lay my head on your shoulder, when the one you have to offer is edged with cold? Is there an ounce of dignity in the remains of the world as I had conceived, but which you had shattered upon your arrival?

 

Then there is the matter of how, how I should have the words of all the universe at my fingertips, only for them to crumble and dissipate at my very touch. How I should pursue the deepest secrets of articulation, only to be sat smiling like an idiot, listening to your fascinations and musings mute. How my highest aspiration, the mastery of eloquence, should be rendered irrelevant and illusory the minute you are with me. And I would finish these sentences, these dreadful hows, except that I am made dumb. For all the galaxies under my control, they are outshined into obscurity, eclipsed, by the moon of your presence.

 

Because when I am with you, the eternal stream of my consciousness, the unceasing tide of thoughts that stays my slumber, the very passage of time as I am aware of it – all stops. All is silent. All is naught.

 

To love you wordlessly, why, that is my worst torture and greatest content.

 

From the bottom of my humbled heart,