These Are The Most Romantic Things I've Ever Said, And It Is The Whiskey Talking

My Dear K,

Let's get married to the idea of each other. I am in love with my picture of you. Sometimes romantically, sometimes not. We are never the same together as we are apart. How have we come this far with so much time and space between us? When I saw you this New Years Eve we talked very little, we caught up, but it wasn't enough.

I'm going to write some things now that might sound romantic but they are not. If you take my meaning as I wish to communicate it we will carry on as before, because none of what follows is really about you, but also, it is about you.

When I read your letters, I want to hold you and kiss your lips and feel your hair in my hands. I want the warmth of your body next to mine. I want the music of your awkward laugh in my ears. I want to lift you up and hold you there. I want to come home to you. I love you and everything you are. I imagine you in sunlight with green all around you. I imagine you in the dark, next to me, our breath hot on each other's necks. I see you in my dreams. I wait for you in empty rooms. I feel the space next to me in my empty bed and I feel the curves of your body that I've never felt. It feels like home. I want to walk with you in parks. I want to go on picnics in the rain with you. I want to hold an umbrella above you. I want to hold car doors open for you. I want to laugh at jokes only between us. I want to go to a distant land with you. I want to play chess. I want to drink with you. I want to laugh with you. I want to sing with you. I want to hear bands play music only for us. I want to kiss in the rain, and in the wind, and in the snow, and in sunlight. I want to feel your sweat. I want to hand you kleenexes when you sneeze. I want to say "Bless You". I want to hold back your hair when you vomit. I want to hold your hand as we wait for bad news from the doctor. I want only you to laugh at my jokes. I want to stand next to you and wash dishes. I want to plant a garden with you. I want to argue with you and know that the argument isn't bigger than us. I want to you to take care of me when I'm sick. I want ride the bus with you. I want to ride airplanes with you. I want to sit next to you when I'm old and look back on our lives and know that we lived them well. I want you to try and change me, and I want to resist. I want you to love me. I want you to wear dresses for me. I want to dance with you to songs we're too young to care about. I want to run through fields with you. I want to take a salsa dancing class with you when we fall into tired and boring routines. I never want us to fall into tired and boring routines. I want us to go on cruises and the whole time we'll talk about how nobody should ever go on cruises, because they're the worst. I want romance. I want life. I want love. I want these things, but none of them are you.


You are my friend and confidant, and my sounding board, my constant assurance in a sea of troubles. I want the woman from the letters, and you are not her. Perhaps no one can ever be her. She is a figment of our imagination. I want this relationship I have built with a person made of words. I want to put literature to the test. I want fairy tales to be real. I want love to be real. I want the neurons firing in my brain to mean something. I want something. I want everything. I want. I am wanting. I am waiting.

Do you understand what I am trying to say? Do you understand that aside from this whole post, I love everything that you are and will be? Do you understand that I mean all of this platonically? Do you understand that I feel like we are ships passing in the night? Do you understand that you mean so much to me, even though it will be days or weeks or months since we've communicated? Do you?

I hope you know how much you mean to me.
Even So Far Away,
K