I cannot yet tell you how your scent makes me dizzy….of how I visualize us making love…of how scared I am because I feel myself spiraling deeper and wider and more. And more….and more…

I cannot tell you how I want to nurture and care for you. But for now, I can a little- for propriety’s sake.

I can joyfully make you masala tea, do your laundry, and make my heart indispensable and available to you. I can do these things without worrying if I’m being ‘too much.’

I can look at you with wide eyes….I can receive your recognition. I’ve seen you and have already swam in your depths: I like it there. It’s safe…and warm. I can relax in between the words…in between the thoughts.

This feeling is how the reds and golds of the leaves look and how it is to sit next to you on a plaid blanket beside an autumn bonfire…better still: a fur rug beneath our naked, sheen-covered bodies by the winter fireplace. We feel the teasing draft of the sharp winter air, but we don’t mind. 

Your eyes are fire. They dance and flicker and spark—-for they do not know me yet. But I know me, and I know how instinctively I respond to your energy. So I stay away and run from your investigative requests to meet. I answer your phone calls, because in them, I can hide away between airwaves and fate.

You want to know me, but I am afraid of my own openness.

You came into my consciousness the way the wind is blowing through the mountains now. You’re laying waste to my ingrained habits and stuckness- for I have been waiting for you….I’ve been waiting for this cycle.

My leaves do not cling: they’ve been ready for this season’s change: in a vale’s gust, you’ve effortlessly blown away my old realities and thought patterns. You’ve neither tried nor have you forced. You are wind. You are gentle and strong.

You are the Sun in Aesop’s Fables: all you must do is shine radiant light, and I shed my wraps and layers. There’s no force: you are persistent….you are intense.

I feel secure and strong within myself when I am near you. You are a rock…you are a mountain….and you are safe.

You wrapped me up just seconds after I came to you. I was not yet pliant nor yielding. I needed to cling to you a little. Your first hug was strong and I felt myself rise to meet it- to match you.

I remember almost running up the hill to you. You magnetized me. I remember only seeing and feeling you with the mountain scene panning around us.

Later, I hid my tears while I took in the expanse as you showed me your forest and mountain.

I’ve never known that my breath could be taken by such beauty. I saw your home and hearth with virgin eyes and heart. Your mountain top is my heaven, and I will always feel that way. Nothing can take away the vastness I felt that day- the expansion I still feel while tears pool in my eyes.

I sit on my front porch as I write to you. With my face to the east, I feel the winds blowing north now. They blow to where you are. I did not expect you to come into my life so soon. I am trying to understand this yearning inside, and I feel woefully unprepared for you.

In truth, I know I must rise to be better for you as well as myself. The first time you called, I mentioned how I’d been fond of playing in the shadows and darkness. While that darkness served a purpose, I am grateful for the light and contrast you’ve brought into me. I’ve needed your light- your Mirror, to remind me of who I am.

I will soon be ready for you, although I’m aware that I sometimes create an idealized perfection I know I’ll not reach within this mortal coil…but I will be happy to evolve and try.

I also know I shouldn’t place you on such a pedestal, for that is dangerous to both of us.

We both move slow in our feelings, but we also know our souls have never been strangers. I want you to be my best friend, for I like you so very much! You fascinate and draw me in. I want us to deny our animal magnetism so I can learn to be wholly and unabashedly myself with you. I want you to like me before you love me…not that I believe those two to be mutually exclusive.

Perhaps it is in some way I am trying to bring order to the chaos in my heart for you. I’ve never been this stricken, even though I know it is self-imposed and self-created.

I make these wind tunnels and vortexes and get quite lost in myself, and for that reason, I need you. I need you to hear my rawness and openness. I am messy. I am neither tidy nor neat in my feelings. You are beautiful and whole, yet you still accept me.

I am yielding to Gibran’s threshing for the sacred feast. It is in this vulnerability I feel stripped and bare before you. You’ve found me in a most raw, open state….and all I can do is trust you and stay vulnerable.