Message Without A Bottle

My dearest Emily,

My love. I do not know if you will ever read this. The chances are slim at best but my hope is strong, though I must admit that it is diminishing by the day.

I apologise. It was not my intention in writing this to be maudlin nor to centre on myself. To the contrary. There is nothing more that I would wish for myself than to be centred on you: you, you and only you!

I can hear you laughing! I always was verbose. You always told me that. "Why, Robert, you could simply say 'Yes'," and then you would giggle gaily at my discomfort, my runaway tongue having once more created discourse where there need be none.

But you did not mean anything by your chastisement. I could see from the shine in your eyes that you meant merely to tease, to poke mild fun and I was ever your plaything, grateful for your attention.

The longing to be near to you makes me ache. My eagerness to reach you in some way has caused me to become inventive: this piece of bark stripped from a tree, with this makeshift pen made from the feather of a brightly coloured squawking bird, with ink made from crushed crab shell - the writing materials of the desperate, shipwrecked lover.

Writing this brings me comfort. I do not permit myself to believe it fruitless. I dare to think expansively: that perhaps one day, and I hope against hope that this will be so, a bottle will beach into which I can place this missive and I will launch it and it will bob its way to you, helped by Aphrodite, who with a swirl of her hand will create a current to bring it to where you are, and you will reach, into the waves, knowing that contained in its confines is the essence of my love for you, coiled and conserved, and ready for your devoted gaze.

And I imagine you opening the stopper, if there is one, and plucking out these words, smoothing the bark with your gloved hand or holding its curling ends like a scroll, like a herald of old, looking divine as your brows knit with concentration, gleaning from these poor scribbles the depth of my love for you, Emily, my heart.

I permit myself the indulgence of visualising the full gamut of your emotions: your shock, your delight, your sadness, your tears, your grief. Do you hear my voice, Emily, in your head? Whilst this pains me as I would never want you hurt, it gladdens me to imagine I am missed. Am I, Emily? Am I missed?

There is nothing else on which to focus. I do not know what to do. What can I do? I am stranded. I am a wreck. Wretchéd in my exposure and my helplessness. The sun beats down relentlessly. How I long for low, grey cloud and the damp coldness of rain. An impenetrable mist would be a boon! And a chair or a pipe or a book are luxuries of which I fantasise! It is incredible to contemplate of how deeply I crave these simple pleasures!

But it is you, Emily, whom I crave the most. The seat, the deep chasm of my longing is for you, my love. To hold you, envelope you, feel your soft curves against me and your willing eyes gazing up into mine. I know I am verging, maybe even shaking the bounds, of impropriety but it burns within me, this desire, this unfulfilled desire, and expressing my passion may be the only thing that I have left to give, this man who has nothing. And I want to give it so much! So much!

I must focus. I do not want you to think these are the ravings of a madman, although there is evidence to support the fact that I may be losing my tentative grip on reality. I talk to myself, starved of company. I talk to crabs, shellfish, rocks. Days are so long. Days are so repetitive. So blue. Always blue. There is no respite in variation and yet, all I do all day is lie. There is no alternative but to rest.

What I want you to know is that I love you. I've always loved you. You sustain me more than what I am able to forage or fish, even on this distant island. I picture your hair, lit by sun, golden, curled, shining and silky, bouncing as you laugh or as turn your head towards me and it lifts my spirits. I imagine its softness as my finger reaches for it and a soft smile reaches my cracked lips. I hear your voice, playful, light and your endearments and I feel strengthened and invigorated! Ah, me.

I dream of your soft lips: pink, plump, expectant. Do you remember the drawing room? I do. We were undisciplined that day, my love but I am grateful for it! The heat of it warms me on the nights as I lie, staring at a stark, black sky, framed by fronds. Your soft breasts, your hesitant but trusting gaze, beguiling and tempering in equal measure!

This is torture of the most exquisite kind, unrequited in the most cruel way!

As I remember you, our shared time, I reach up, extolling the stars in order for them to shine for me, the brightest they could ever shine, to show you in their heavenly glint the reflection of my yearning for you and shower it down on you from above. For we are under the same sky and that gives me solace. Small comfort to an isolated, lonely man; small comfort to a man who may never see his love again.

And as I stare at the heavens, the wash of the ocean the rhythmic cadence of my life now, the whispering of the trees the closest to conversation I have, I pray: I pray that you can sense me; I pray that my love emanates from me like an ethereal mist and is carried on the trade winds to you; I pray that when sunshine warms your cheek, it imbues you with the sense of me and you imagine my hand touching your face; I pray that the tickle on your neck from a warm breeze or a lucky insect's landing reminds you of my breath, my closeness to you and my ardent affection; I pray that you think of me and that your heart clenches in synchronicity with mine and you see me, like a conjuring, a magical manifestation that brings me to you again!

Do you know that I am alive? Do you intimate me in the air around you? Does your heart reach for me? Do you wake at night, my face vivid in your mind and know that I exist? Do you wish for me, as I wish for you?

For you are still my everything, Emily.

I wait. The horizon brings nothing but a shimmer and a dawn. I languish, my love, a shadow of who I was.

But I take heart that something of mine may yet reach you, that something of mine may be with you now, in your memory of me perhaps, but more than that, I wish for a bottle and when that bottle lands here on this shore, as surely it must, I will place these words of mine within and send my longing for you across the oceans and perhaps, when your delicate hands deftly unfurl this papyrus, you will release a part of me into the air and your presence will be enriched by mine and we will meld together, entwined as one, if only for a brief moment in this lifetime as we were always destined to.

It is my dearest, most ardent wish.

For I love you, my darling Emily and always will, from now to eternity. Hear the beat of my heart and my love for you in the music you play on the piano, in the clatter of hooves on the cobbles, in the tap of a branch on a window and know that I love you still.

'Til the day where we hold each other again, wherever that may be.

Forever your beloved,

Robert