Love Letters

Do I dare dream of love letters?

Fancy lines and sweet nothings, lazily scrawled across lined pages with no reason or structure. Muses of a rose-tinted mind, painted in ink. Words dance across the pages to the tune of grandeur and fantasy.

Beneath the skin of the page, the author lies, quiet and still, floating on his daydream, basking in an ethereal sun of his creation. He paints to life his lover, lying in the grass on the banks of a stream. She is sprawled on the ground, back firmly pressed to the earth, face turned upward, soaking in the sun’s heat. Her fingers lightly trail over the water’s surface. Her hair, deep and rich as chocolate, falls around her face in dense, tight curls, a silky crown framing her delicate features. She radiates the warmth of the day, her power glowing beneath caramel skin.

Power is a curious thing. A currency in its own right; we give, and we receive. One who holds a wealth of power holds influence and attention. A lack of power leads to desolate and desperate times. When we hold power, how do we lose it? How are we convinced to let our power go, to exchange our power for some other intangible ware? Or worse yet, how is our power stolen, the rug ripped from beneath us swift and brutal.

I gave him my power blindly. I thought we were happily entwined in an exchange, that we each were laying our power down for the other. But alas my power was laid bare, vulnerable and shaking in its nakedness. And, as such, was taken. Drug away from me without a word. My power was in shackles before I even had time to breathe or think.

How does the author write me now? Still with such tenderness and angelic grace? Am I still warmth personified, idyllic companion to a romantic scene? Or have my edges sharpened, my features flattened out and muted? Does he reduce me now to a non-descript figurine in his ever-shifting work of art? A faded object with no discernable parts or place to reside. At what point in his work will he erase me entirely, not even a whisper or a hazy hue to be found in his painting now.

I dare not dream of love letters. For letters become ash and ash slips to nothing with the slightest behest of the wind. And I dare not dream of nothing.