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Jul 2015
223
Open letter


Dear B

It overwhelms me to write this because this week I've been speechless. So speechless. You've witnessed this as my eyes suddenly watered because staring into your eyes showed me something I had never seen. I always knew, but after five months apart, and seeing that stare through a screen, I forgot the magic that lies behind it and the feelings it stirs in me. That stare alone reminds me of everything I've always wanted and never knew how to get, never knew what it was worth if I ever did. I've been searching for this thing forever. Anxious and needy and impatient. So I apologize to the men I never loved, because I thought maybe "love" was something you speak out loud when you crave their body or just want someone to stay around just a little longer. I mistook all of them for something only you could be, hoping that they could fill the gap I never knew was always going to be empty until you came along. But I never knew until I knew.

Loving you gives me a new life that is lighter, easier, yet fuller at the same time. Being with you, holding your hand, knowing that I am yours and you are fully mine, it cements a feeling of peace, finally. And I just never would have thought as we crossed paths that summer 2013 during soar, I'd fall so in love with that brown boy from California wearing a tank top so boastful of his LA roots. But I did, and each day you allow me to be yours still feels brand new. Five months without you can be described as "it literally knocked her down at night, and raised her up in the morning, for when she dragged herself off to bed, having spent another day without his presence, her heart beat like a gloved fist against her ribs." Well, I'm not Hagar nor you Milkman, and my love is not affliction, but I ached those months to be next to you long enough for pecks to turn to passionate kisses that excluded the world. Waters rushing through me strong enough to erase anyone that is not you from my body, and force my mouth to  refute those who ever visited. "You never had me, I am not who I was then. I am only his, all of his."
Alexandria Rae Mason
741
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