Dearest,
Have you ever thought about space as a metaphor for life? Everything is so far away from away from each other but it is our destiny to try to reach out and touch the untouchable, to long for our Pluto and to dance circles around our Jupiter. It is our desire to destroy the boundaries and to cross the infinite spaces between. But as Newton said, every movement has a force behind it. Every dream has a fuel source. You are the dream and I am the inspiration. You're the best of what isn't real, that is what makes you so remarkable, Sasha. What everyone must someday learn is that the intangible, make believe, happily ever after thoughts they have are the closest thing to real; that they are more plausible and believable because we yearn for them to become more than legends with every fiber in our bodies and every prayer that escapes our lips.
Have you ever just gone into a library to just walk around-to smell the books, feel their spines, read a few pages here and there, to lose yourself? I'm in one today and it's so beautiful. Great big stain glass windows and thick wooden tables (the kind with carvings from rebellious teens). For me libraries seem more like churches; I feel so much more in them. This one is old and some of the books are kept in glass cases. I could spend hours wandering, just running my fingertips over them. It's so much easier to believe another person's idea of the perfect story than to believe my own. It's easier to believe in words and lies and yesterday. Books are like those glass prisms you hold up to the light. You can see the all the colors but you still have to decipher what each one means for yourself. That's why I like them. I'm writing to you from the floor of isle 14 and I am alone. I'm stealing a book off the shelf and sending it to you. I hope you like it.
Have you ever heard Moonlight Sonata? It's so beautiful it makes me want to cry. Do beautiful things make you cry? Beautiful things are so sad, so tired. This is what makes them so lovely. Sometimes things are so beautiful that they are hard to look at. Do you know any thing like that? I do: that promise you made about our child. That promise made my arms ache for a baby I had never held. That promise was more something than anything else. Why do I reach out in the night for you? Why does looking at the stars make me miss you less?
Since you make promises, I will make wishes.
I wish the world spun in reverse. I wish it would spin back to the day in the woods. That day where time was nothing and we weren't sure about each other. You said, "Are you ever afraid of me?." Your hair was still long then and the trees cast these shadows on your face. You asked the question like you'd been thinking about it for a long time.
I said, "No. Well sometimes you look so angry and that is more sad than scary."
"That's because I am sad." You're so honest, Sasha.
"I know." The worst feeling in the world is when others know you're sad. The worst feeling in the world is shame.
"I don't feel anything." You looked me in the eyes; I wanted to make you feel the way I felt when you looked at me.
"I feel everything." Which wasn't a lie.
"Will you teach me how to be alive?"
"Yes." You know what happens next. A kiss, more kisses, a thousand kisses, in a thousand places. A thousand touches stitched together with good intentions. A thousand heart beats, a thousand seconds, a million times over.
Then I would rewind back to that night at Lake Lagoda with that violet, starless sky. You told me of your family for the first and last time. You said your father was fierce and your mother was so quiet. "She slipped through the rooms of the apartment like a wisp of smoke. She almost never spoke and when she did it was to say, 'Prastite.' I am sorry. Her life was an apology. She never once said, 'Ya tebya lyublyu, Sasha.' She had no conviction, no place, no backbone. She loved all her clothes because they were more costumes she could dress up in, more masks she could don. She could play so many parts: Stepan's wife, Sasha and Nikolay's mother, the woman who prayed with her eyes open, the once beautiful daughter of Daniil and Zoya. She was a weak extension of her ancestors, an aftertaste of her adolescence. She had no definite side or characteristic."
You paused and closed you eyes: a trademark, a sign. Your hands came to your face as if they could sift through the sand of your past, as if they could find truth. "Darya Petrov, was not my family, she was a ghost."
I took those hands into my hands and said what Darya never said, what she should have said at every moment, at every single inkling of a chance, "Ty takaya chudesnaya." You are so wonderful. I took those hands into my hands and I didn't say, "I love you." I said, "You are so wonderful." I didn't say it just to say it. I said it because you are so wonderful. I said it because I wanted you to know you're wonderful. I wanted to wake you up. Because you need to hear someone telling you, "You're so wonderful," because everyone needs this. Because you are a human and you can dream, think, run and say "I love you." Because you are alive. Because you are mine. Because I wanted to take the world you had given me, rearrange it and give it back to you.
I wish I could wake up next to you every day for a year just so I can tell you you're wonderful three hundred and sixty five times. Just so I can see if the hue of your eyes has changed slightly or if your arms still feel the same when they are around me. I will kiss the shadows away, all the while whispering...
You are so wonderful.
You are so wonderful.
You are so wonderful.
You are so wonderful.
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