When it comes to matters of the heart and groin, I know myself only too well. If these past 18 chaste months have taught me anything, it is precisely that. Oh, I’ve deceived myself a plenty in the past or confused the one with t’other. But this time, I acted from a pure combination of instinct and understanding. No planning required - even if proprieties had to be observed. I know I pushed the boundaries to the limits and maybe I overreached.. I tried my damndest to rein myself in.
I held you again in the summer-house because I wanted to feel you a second time without the impatient regard of the ticket-warden, for whom the cost of our affection was a mere pound for the slot. I like to think she went back to business thinking of us as two lovers reuniting. Perhaps in a scant moment her mind strayed towards what pent-up passions we would later spend before settling back on the next dashboard. I needed her out the way.
I wanted to see how close I could bring my lips to yours without us actually kissing; like standing beside an electric fence or holding the finger-tip to the flame. Or was I just seducing you – coaxing you towards that first dangerous move? Of course I know I was equally to blame, if blame must be mentioned – which I think it shouldn’t. Nip the rose in the bud and it blooms again with a mightier force. Prune it back too hard and it withholds its generosity from all. Spring cannot hold its joy (thank you for the poems by the way).
It was lovely to give you that gift, knowing as I did that you’d had so few when I have known so many. Perhaps too many. It matters not. I came to you clean.
Any words I have would understate the strength of passion you stirred. And even now, I struggle to keep my mind from wandering too closely towards it lest it sap it of any of its power, or lest it add to it that which was never there.
I behaved myself well I think. I was courteous and attentive to all. I even went primly to my bed fully clothed (to sleep naked, as I do, therein seemed somehow improper) I hid well the flame that burned all the warmer for being contained.
Arriving home after that dreadful journey, I found my hyacinths had bloomed while I’d been away. The house was filled with their sappy sweetness. So many things that once didn’t seem so now feel possible. I have been bonny and blithe these past two days. I smile at strangers and they all smile back. The boy with the brown skin and kind eyes winked at me in the shop. I ushered the old lady before me in the queue and she told me of how she’d recently become a vegetarian. We both agreed that a little fish from time to time was not a bad thing. I danced to the music that no one else could hear and the girl in the car with yellow curls grinned at me as she sat at the lights.
This morning I found a fragment of stem in my hair and chose to leave it there. I don’t want these things to fade, like the bruise on my thigh, the scent of your hair on my collar, the flesh-memory of the smell and the feel of your skin. These things I will hold tight to my heart. So long as I don’t want you too hard, I still have you complete, but not exclusively (we are too loving for that).
I write from outside in the first streaks of sun to warm these stones. My favourite black viola has offered so many flowers as defiance against all that winter. The light seeks out the violets and greens in the lower petals. The shadowed parts have the dull lustre of velvet-silk. Part butterfly, part moth; I’ve tried so many times to explain this flower – both in pigments and words – but every time it escapes me! I would like to send you one, or put it to your mind. I could go on and on and on describing but it would all get botanically tedious. Suffice to say;
- The largess of the spring -
I want you to enjoy it as much as me.
Take care my love and may peace rest upon you and your home.
K.xxx
P.S. I am certain I will have left a scented trace of myself on the pillow which I deliberately turned over to preserve. I shouldn't think laundry is likely to be a priority for you just now. (That was an enormous and mischievous hint ;-)
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