Romantic Musings: What Is A Love Letter?

I like to believe that it is a short story between two hearts.

They could be two hearts that beat as one, but where is the fun in that?

Let’s throw in a bit of conflict.

After all, love is like a sword. A blade forged in a fierce flame. A sword, like Excalibur, that may only be held by those with the purest heart. The markings engraved by passion. Stained with the blood of a broke heart.

Broken by what? A long lost love? Unrequited love?

Must we first know what it truly means to love before we can write about it?

Yes and no.

Some would postulate that fiction writing is predicated on creativity, and others would contend that you must write what you know.

Even if most of us merely have an idea about what love is without truly understanding what love means, we all know how heartbreak feels. Don’t we?

Now. You might ask, how can we know heartbreak if we truly don’t understand love.

Well, we all know sadness without knowing heaven, don’t we?

I daresay that most of us have merely caught a glimpse of love. Have savored tiny droplets of devotion in a desert of loneliness that barely quenches our thirst, and imbues our desire for another taste.

We look to the sky, and pray for rain during the dry seasons of our souls.

It is in those valleys of our journey that we reflect on the romances of our lives. When only the moon accompanies us on our voyage, we remember what only the moon witnessed when we loved.

You know what I am referring to, don’t you?

The memory that lingers in the hidden corners of your heart like a ghost that clings to its bond to the living, haunting your dreams in the day, and swimming through your thoughts at night like a silent shadow when you sleep.

How would your love letter read?

What would your story say?

Love is a long story, but it is a story worth telling. It has its pain and joy, its sunny days and storms; and moments like these when you are gone; I don’t know how long the storm will last.

It’s scary to think I might never hold you again, and even though you have departed, I haven’t let you go. I cling to what is left, and willingly relinquish the rest.

I lost myself in you, and to lose you is to lose everything, but the only regret I could ever have in losing it all is to not lose it for love.

In the aftermath of what has occurred, I will wander into the darkness of heartache, and roam through the empty corridors of unrequited love. I shall search for the memory of you that mends my broken heart. I will follow the ghost of your presence that haunts me along an invisible path; where you remain in the shadows, and long for me to find you.

I don’t care if I am left exhausted or incomplete; left with the impression that you took away everything with imperious greed, because you revealed to me the nature of love: an allurement of happiness that I detest and desire, but from which an escape is impervious.

And if all that remains is the memory of you, then that shall suffice, because I will have at least retained possession of the most precious gift of all. Love.

“The frankest and freest and privatest product of the human mind and heart is a love letter...” ~Mark Twain