Get Wherever We're Going Before Me

Dear K,

My life isn't the great romance I thought it was going to be. I have all these quiet moments of loneliness and doubt. I've spent the last couple of weeks going through the motions. Working hard, eating frozen dinners, taking long baths and reading books I've read a hundred times. Some days I don't talk to anyone, except for the odd manager at work who comes over to ask how I am doing.

Oh, but then there are those nights. Those cold frozen nights when the stars come right down to our feet. Our breath hangs just above our heads, stopped by the cold, afraid to get too far away from us. That's the sort of night I like best, quiet, still, and cold. If there was a God, I would think that he spent a lot of time in a quiet still cold place before he made the world. It is the walk from your car to the party. All your friends are waiting and you know you'll have a good time and smile and tell old stories and make new memories, but there is that moment out in the cold, when you see them all inside together and they look complete without you. In the cold air you can hear their voices echoing. That moment is bliss, simple melancholy bliss. It is the clarinet's glissando at the start of Gershwin's Rhapsody and it is melancholy Shostakovich violin, calling out to the future.

When I see you in two weeks, not even two weeks, I will fill the room with my laughter. I will burst the joints at their seems, and we will tell stories and make new memories, if we feel like it we'll dance. But do me a favor and get wherever we're going before me.

Yours,

K