DEAR LOVE

Dear Love,

It's one of those early mornings/late nights/I-never-quite-went-to-bed times when all I can think of is kissing you. A good psychiatrist might say that I am obsessed--compulsively so--given the way you show up in my thoughts and lodge there, the way you take a seat and prop your feet up in my mind and just stare at me. I'm sure you don't mean to; I mean, I'm sure you're not having any thoughts about me in this moment. Certainly not thoughts that keep you up and make you wonder what I'm doing right now. I'm sure you're not thinking about my lips or the time you turned your face up and we smiled and I lingered for a moment before I did it--kissed you I mean. I hadn't been thinking about kissing you when I did. It's just that in that moment, with the evening light streaming through the dining room window and the words floating all around us as poets were working... well, kissing you seemed like the most natural thing to do in that moment. And who knew what a kiss could lead to. Certainly, not I. I had no idea that love would be so contained, so potent, so pressed up against lips and teeth barely brushing. But then, I have always been slow about these things. And in this moment, when I feel the most insecure about Love, about you, about us as I haven't in so long, I am thinking only about the way you breathe when you're exasperated... or when you're happy (sometimes those exhalations sound the same). I am wrapped in my own fear right now. I tried to syphon some of it off by sharing with you my feelings, but you could not hold them without thinking I was saying something about you. "Don't take it personally" sounds good I guess, until you take it personally. Nevertheless, I am up. And you are no doubt sleep and dreaming of something else, or counting beans (a shorthand for the way you obsess over work). There are no kisses, I am sure, in your dreams tonight. But I am up. And kissing you is all I can think of in this moment.

With all my Heart,
Your Valerie

Valerie Bridgeman
© September 24, 2013