we all have your shortcomings

Dear K-

When I was young, I liked to read the Confessions of St. Augustine. I can’t say I can remember it word for word today, but several parts really stuck with me over the years. One line I have certainly retained in my memory is a portion that I read over-and-over on cold winter nights like these. “I loved not yet, yet I loved to love…I was in love with the idea of loving and sought what I might love…”

I have always wanted to love. The idea makes my heart feel airy with delight, and yet I have difficulty finding people to focus my affection upon. As much as I wish to experience love and to have some feeling of devotion or dedication, to be able to write love letters, to take someone out to dinner and stare across the table content to say nothing at all because my adoration crosses beyond the threshold of words, I am unable to find that relationship. And so I wait, in love with the idea of love and yet not in love. With this clumsy explanation I attempt to relate to your desire to reach out in your loneliness and yet admit you're not in love. You’re seeking the idea, the blissful feeling of having someone to think about and converse with, but without actually having to dedicate any actual feelings or hassle with the commitment. I suppose I can understand that. Just don’t expect me not to ever write you a reply. I reserve the right on these lonely winter nights, when I hunch over my desk half-naked in the wee hours of morning, unable to sleep because I’m dwelling upon regrets and Brno, to draft up some responses. Perhaps I could use the relief just as much as you.

We’re more alike than you may think. You know me perhaps better than most simply because you’ve read my writings. You know how I feel when I’m alone with no comfort except a blank sheet of paper and a dull pencil. You’ve seen the me that I hide from the common world, the me that hoards receipts and old shopping lists, the me that thinks of lovers lost and yearns for days that can never return, the me that cries at the thought of tiramisu and still dreams of running paths in Slovenia and of a certain dark-eyed Slav. But what can I do? I have to let it out somehow. And just as you need to write letters, I have to let someone know that I’m not fully okay inside and know that I won’t be immediately judged. I’m sinking deep into myself, especially now that I’m alone here.

I’m always alone in winter.

Throw me flowers. I’ll pick them up and press them between the pages of heavy books, preserving their fragile, lovely petals for years to come.

Slowly fading into winter,
-K