The Love Letter

The Love Letter

Dearest,

Do you know how very much in Love with you I am?
How does one fall in Love?
Do you trip?
Do you stumble, loose your balance and drop to the
sidewalk, graze your knee, graze your heart?
Do you crash to the stony ground?
Is there a precipice, from which you float,
over the edge, forever?

I know I'm in Love when I see you,
I know when I long to see you.
Not a muscle has moved.
Leaves hang unruffled by any breeze.
The air is still.
I have fallen in Love without taking a step.
When did this happen?
I havn't even blinked.
I'm on fire. Is that too banal for you?
It's not, you know.
You'll see. It's what happens. It's what matters.
I'm on fire.
I no longer eat, I forget to eat.
Food looks silly to me, irrelevant.
If I even notice it. But I notice nothing.
My thoughts are full and raging, a house full of
brothers, related by blood, fueding blood fueds:

“I'm in Love.”
“Typically stupid choice.”
“I am, though, I'm racked by Love as if Love were
pain.”
“Go ahead, Fuck up your life. It's all wrong and you
know it. Wake up. Face it.”
“There's only one face, it's all I see,
awake or asleep.”

I threw the book out the window last night.
I tried to forget.
You are wrong for me, I know it, but I no longer care
for my thoughts unless they're thoughts of you.

When I'm close to you, in your presence, I feel your
hair brush my cheek when it does not.
I look away from you, sometimes. Then I look back.

When I tie my shoes, when I peel an orange, when I
drive my car, when I lie down each night without you,
I remain,

Yours

    (c) 1995 by Cathleen Schine
    from her book 'The Love Letter'