Sent To You

I love you.

I've never said or written that to anyone before and it looks disappointingly naked and little and like it's in a Facebook message. But I send it to you not in the way of a verb, or in the sense or hope of inspiring verbs, but in an inanimate way. It’s just a thing that is there. Like a stick or a river or something. I've thought of you everywhere that I've been for these years but not all of the time. Sometimes I leave you where you are and me where I am for weeks, but then I go to you or bring you to me. Never for long. It’s like remembering not to forget something. And then we each go back to where we are.

I know very little about how you have changed or even what you've been doing. I could wish that I loved you when we were together but I don’t because I couldn't have. All I could love then was the idea of loving. It was a nice thing to think about and imagine. The love I send to you doesn't feel as good. It’s more like an empty stomach nostalgic scared kind of thing.

If prayer actually happens then I don’t see why love can’t be sent from one person to another. I hope that we are someday old and overweight and sitting on a train each having lived separate lives, barely recognizable one to the other, and I hope that the train will be forced to stop because of snow on the tracks and that we will order wine and tell the stories of our lives to one another and it will be like another night that was the same and then we will go where we go except for the few moments when my eyes are closed and I’m planning my next day and then I cannot sleep and then I bring you to me or myself to you because I've remembered not to forget.     

-P&B