Love Letters

~ lover’s moon ~

How many times have I told you of the mystery of the lover’s moon? It sits within the sky tonight, full and shining brightly as if a beacon to guide two lovers to each other. I feel the pull of the moon on my heart like the waves feel its pull and cause them to roll into the shore, crashing in and out, and like the sea foam glowing in the moonlight, so glows the fire in my heart for you.

The gravitational pull of the moon tugs at the strings on my heart, pulling me closer to you, even in the dark, even though space and distance separates us tonight… I feel the pull of the lover’s moon and the pull of you on my heart. My body remembers the fleshly desires that the strength of you creates on nights like this. Whispered memories flood my mind and cause the sensations of lust to flow freely through my veins, to pour out of me; to escape the confines of my mind and explode in obvious excitement.

My heart pounds. The flesh on my arms rise in goose bumps and my nipples extend to their full height; my body remembers you, it recalls your touch and the way your lips feel upon the skin that covers my heart, my soul, my being.

Lover, oh lover, where are you tonight? Do you look at the night sky and remember me? Does the moon hang brightly in your world and shine a path through the corridors of your mind to that place where my memories burn? I wonder if you recall the way that we would talk under the glow of that magical orb in the sky… share fantasies of a perfect world where you would have known me before any other…

And the lover’s moon shines tonight and calls out to you and me. It says that we should be together; that you and I should remember the passion that the glow of the moon can inspire within us… the lover’s moon calls out our names and the passing clouds offer us sanctuary from the moonbeams. And yet, there is no way that you and I will meet under the radiance of this wondrous and glowing planet. We will not toss down a blanket on thick grass; we will not meet in secrecy; there will be no rolling blissfully among the stars, upon the blanket together… no, the lover’s moon shines for other lovers tonight. We are not invited to partake in the invitation of inhibition…

Somewhere, across the miles, I know you are gazing into the blue-black universe and counting the stars; you are seeing that moon, hanging there… you too can feel the pull of the moon upon your heart. I know you know I’m here, thinking of you and remembering our times together. I write you love letters. I write you sonnets of love. I write you poetry to regale the passion I have always felt for you… and tonight, I stare into the night sky, I write you love letters, and I look at the lover’s moon.

~ time ~

At some time, it will all come to pass that within the buried aches that plague me now, I will find a reason to smile again. Without warning or notice, there will another to take the place in my life that is so completely filled with the memories of you. There will someone to kiss away the pain and help me to find a new hope in a hopeless world. He will never be able to steal away the love I have for you. No one can ever take that away. That love was given to you, is reserved for you, and belongs only to you.

Such is the way of the world that time passes and things change. Time marches on and a new drumbeat plays in the ears and hearts of lovers everywhere. For some, this will be the first time they will fall in love and for others, it will be the last. To be able to know the difference takes patience, knowledge.

Keeping time with the drummer, my heart will learn to recognize the tune of new love. It has been a valuable learning experience to come to this point in my life. You have been integral to this process that has consumed so much of my time. Even now, you control the movements of my fingers, the thoughts in my mind, and the feelings in my heart.

The passion I felt for you at the beginning still remains strong within me. You are all things to me. I feel as though I have known you since before creation. I have no memories now of a time when I did not love you. There is no moment that has passed before my eyes and the windows to my soul that I cannot recall with vivid clarity. Like the movement of the second hand on the face of the clock, your memory tick, tick, ticks… repeating over and over again the different scenes of our relationship.

Within the workings of this internal clock that has catalogued every hour, minute, second of our times together, there is the filing cabinet of my mind that holds each memory. And when time stands still for me on lonely nights like tonight, I am able to reach into the recesses of the files and withdraw a sweet memory of you.

When the hours pass too slowly and I fear I shall die from the sheer boredom of nothingness; I can recall your smile, however slight, and then I feel not at all alone. Dates have made their marks upon my heart and I recollect the way your kiss felt upon my mouth for each significant event. My birthday; bittersweet rejoining of the two of us… apart it seemed like forever, though only a month had passed. Our kisses were fevered and searching. The touching of your mouth upon mine sparked a fire that burned hotter than any other I had for you. There in the safety of your car, time stood still. We were together, nothing but the cool night air between us and the moonlight of the lover’s moon to illuminate the outside world.

And I look back far enough to remember how I felt and still feel each time I see your handsome face. Not only did I believe you to be handsome, I also said you were beautiful to me. Your beauty being that of a masculine sense, but beauty just the same. It was not just your face that would make me catch my breath in my chest; no, it was also the wonderful, beautiful heart that beats proudly in your chest. The contentment I felt just being with you, shone so brightly that there was no need for me to want any other man in my life. And from one of my poems, I repeat to you about time wasted…

*Passion unknown / love not tasted / longing all alone / for years far wasted… bittersweet tears / fall upon my breast / for many past years / your memory has been at rest… restless heart has been awakened / to knowledge of love gone / and chances never taken… *Excerpt from “Morris Park” by Rose Duncan

~ endings ~

For each new beginning there must be an ending. The ending can be anything from the last lick of an ice cream cone to the last tear shed by the sorrowful heart that has finally learned to let go. From time to time, it seems as though my life has been nothing but endings. The end of innocence. The end of carefree teen-age years; the end of being single, the end of being married…

Amazingly enough, without coming to those endings, I would not be here today, making a new beginning. Probably the ending of a perceived friendship has been one of the hardest things for me to face. The dagger of rejection sears my heart and keeps me bound like a prisoner to the pain. It is the knowledge of my limited ability to change things that prompts me to put an ending to the conflict within my heart. To hang onto the seemingly impossible fantasy that lives within me is madness; to be able to walk away with confidence takes greater strength and dedication. It is an ending I need here, not the continuous, never-ending story that you and I have written together.

For too long I have let you be the warden in this prison where my heart is held, convicted of nothing more than loving you. The conviction is burned on my heart and I will forever hold the title of prisoner of love unrequited. You have held the keys to release me for all this time, but I have now stolen away the power; I’m unlocking the door and releasing myself from your rule. I am bringing to an ending the love story imprinted on the pages of my mind and heart. It is time for the grand finale.

This is the place where the author says, “and they lived happily ever after…” but in this story, it is where I say that I realized a long time ago that there would never be a “happily ever after” for us. All there could ever be here is the ending of a beautiful fantasy that rings true with love as its binding. The ending of one great love story that could have been is to become the beginning of the first chapter in a new book. The book about the rest of my life.

While this is the ending to this story, it is also the beginning of the rest of the days of my life… I shall not waste them anymore on hopeless fantasies. My life can and will be filled with the entertaining and sometimes inane warbling of the poet and writer who seeks to find more out of life. Fill my cup with possibilities, I am now ready to drink from the bittersweet hopes and fears that life will bring me. Fill my cup and let my cup runneth over… give me each day as a new beginning, and let me realize the importance of endings…

~ thank you ~

Thank you for reading this bittersweet record of love letters; alas, there are so many more letters that were written, given, and lost to the love of whom this bell tolls. My words flowed like silk through my fingers, to land as beautiful linens of love upon sheets of paper. Within my mind, I crocheted the masterpiece of expression through the thoughts of deep and abiding love turned into prose, poetry, and verse.

Through my eyes, I still see this man as my one great love… within in my heart, I know that my passion for him will ever burn, but here, within my mind, I recognize the need to let him go… give him up to whatever fates await him…

Like the butterfly breaking free from its cocoon, I am finally flying free and majestically above the torment of love unrequited… although I will never forget the spear that pierced my heart, I have learned to spread my wings and fly…

~ again ~

And now, once again, you are back here, in my life. I cannot remember now when it was that I first contacted you, but I felt so compelled to do it that I picked up the phone and just dialed. I was a little shocked that you didn’t hang up on me, and even more so when I found that you had wanted to talk to me just as much as I wanted to talk to you.

We spoke to each other as if we had never experienced the departure from one another’s lives. It was as tho there was never a break in the continuity of us. You told me of how you were once again alone, how you thought it better that way. You told me of the past year while I had been absent from your life, how, although I was not an everyday fixture in your life like before, I had remained within your mind. And I told you of how I had written page after page in my books of poetry, how I had sat down at my computer and pored over the memories locked in my mind, how I had missed you.

And, again, it was like old times. You and I on the phone for hours, rehashing the past, talking about our futures, our hopes, our dreams. You telling me of how you recalled my heated passion for you. Your voice, once again soothing to my ears. The knowledge that once more, I had some of your attention.

Again. Once again. Here we are standing on the brink of understanding. The edge of friendship that could easily totter over into love. And I recall with such clarity the immense presence you are in my heart. I have never forgotten you. I never will. You have been such an inspiration to these fingers that write upon the pages of my history. You are behind the poems. You are the reason for the writings. You are, here, once again.

Perhaps, someday, you and I will find that elusive butterfly of love. We will have it land softly upon our hearts and touch us with such deep emotion that we will do well to forget one another. But until then, I will remain your friend. I will never lose this love I have for you and no matter who comes into my life or wanders across my path, this one thing will be true. You will always have me, even if I am gone; you and I are a part of each other. It was inevitable. It was divine intervention. Just like it is now, for us to be here, at this juncture, once again…