a love letter

If I could I would stay here with you forever, between tangled sheets and the open window and the hush of cars on the wet street outside. I’ve never wanted so much to press against the passing of time, to slow the change I can see miles off the horizon. I do not want new horizons. I want only you. I have never in my life been so consumed by anything as I am by the need of you. I can build kingdoms in the early hours while your chest falls and the leaves outside turn new shades of green in morning light. I believe we too often forget the impermanence of everything around us, even that which we can touch. We believe if only briefly that we can keep some things forever. I feel reduced to a part of me. I am the silhouette of a woman, a character in a Jane Austen novel, a chorus in a love song. I am sick on myself. I never understood in all my years how people could say they were afraid of love. But I know now. I see how a fear can be born from such an intense happiness that the mere prospect of it being altered is hear stopping. I am afraid of everything now. I start looking up the periodic table of elements to understand the qualities of solubility as if this could somehow make sense of how one thing can absorb another, as if this could make science out of my love for you. I must once again, surrender myself to the impossibility of forever, as I have been doing since the day I met you. Only I forgot for a brief while. And now, I feel alive on the idea again, terrified and alive and so in love.