Love Letter

Rex,

It seems like infinity since I last called you that -- do you think of me sometimes? Has hate wiped it all out -- the thirty million e-mails, wanderlust, and all of that dream stuff? You haunt me with a furious energy that will devour my life -- if I do save myself and learn to love again -- I don't think it will be quite like what we once had.

I wish I had known you more, tried to understand the heart that remained hidden in dark, mysterious shadows -- maybe I had what it took to save you from yourself. I don't know where you are, how life has been since we met last -- would I know you if I saw you someday? How would that feel? I have no memories left of your touch -- I do try to remember, it used to be beautiful and the only I've ever known -- maybe you wouldn't be able to believe that anymore.

This year on your birthday, I thought I had finally banished you from memory, the hardest and the most final exile of all. It was an ordinary day. Snow had covered the ground. That day in fact I did talk about my "situation" (as people would call it) to someone who I think will be able to help me overcome. As I heard myself speak, I realized how difficult it had been to fathom you, and how impossible it was for this person who was listening to me to comprehend our relationship. The sheer magnitude of unknown that has crept in since the time we were truly in love amazed me.

I was talking to a stranger about someone who was once the center of my universe at a time when I knew nothing about him anymore. A few days later, while checking my calendar, I realized that you were a year older and probably still alone in the spirit. I felt redeemed in more ways than one. When I was most anguished I prayed to God to deliver me from the self destructive dementia of loving you, from my happiness being hostage to you. Prayers are most often answered. Are you thinking of me? Why do I think I want to write this letter to you?

Maybe, this after all is reality. I never did know you, did I ? I did want to but maybe for the wrong reasons. I believe this more and more each day that you are indeed unlike anyone else I've ever known, a special someone that one meets only once in a lifetime. One is fated and then there is a relationship that redefines your life and who you are. I am transformed and now know who I really am. Both you and who I used to be are strangers to me -- equally.

In a perfect world, where every wish would come true, I would wish for a magic wand to wipe away those scars that ruined you, I would wish the clock to turn back two decades and more. You would be what you most loved to be most -- an innocent little boy without a care in the world. I see your face turned skyward, your eyes following the kite you fly -- freedom is all this.

When I saw you first, I was touched by the expression of your beautiful eyes. I would in time forget a lot of the agony and ecstasy that was our brief time together. But that look would be the hardest thing to forget, the most enduring memory of all. In a perfect world, the ruins would gather themselves up miraculously giving us back everything we once had and all that we did not. Those dark secrets would gather wings and fly away into the sun -- you would be set free.

Someday, when you are old and gray and are done fighting your demons, your ambitions, your anger and pain, maybe you would sit back on a winter morning like this. Maybe you would watch the snow decorate the pines and drip gently down making ice chandeliers everywhere. Maybe you would remember us holding hands and those long ago feelings of complete tranquility and fulfillment -- the days that had once truly been.

No, I don't want to return to your world -- I'm gone forever. We were like stars in infinite orbits that suddenly did intersect. Our destinies are parsecs apart -- we were for here and now and not forever. She has your smile sometimes and there is this thing about her chin when she's made up her mind -- that makes me laugh and I can't help but remember you. I have almost forgotten your face -- she brings it back sometimes in a lightning flash and then just as suddenly it's already gone. Why won't you let me forget you?

Warm lavender foam runs down the
nape of my neck and down all the
places that I've been kissed and
forgotten, wounded and
forgotten, abandoned and forgotten, forgotten and
forgotten. Tenuous tracks of
dying memory, dying froth.

Nayantara.

Published first in Sulekha as NM (my pen-name)