An Open Love Letter

To my darling Ashlynn...

As I rest here and contemplate the day we've had, listening to you occasionally begin to snore... My feelings are complicated and uncertain. But then, they always are, aren't they? It is not as dramatic as I'm used to. I have a mild headache. I'm slightly tired. I guess I'm content. Nothing flashy, just a gentle, faintly smug feeling that things are all right.
The gratitude was real. The satisfaction of rubbing your feet and knowing that you are appreciating my hands. I am confident that I am doing reasonably well, and that you will miss me when I have to leave, and look back on this time fondly. There has never been any question whether I will miss you.

I am a creature with an extraordinary perspective, and I carry an extraordinary weight. She who helps me shoulder it? That is just one of the things that makes her, too, extraordinary. And yet, we are ordinary within the frames in which we live. You chatting with your friends and co-workers. Me playing Binding of Isaac in idle moments. Sharing music, sharing videos, eating pizza and ice cream. I am reminded of Doctor Who commenting on the beauty and freedom of regular, everyday people, and for once, for a little while, I feel just a little less afraid of age and dying.

I think I will still be afraid of losing you until, one way or another, the last goodbye ever said between us falls on dead ears. In the mean time, fear is balanced and comforted by your presence and your bizarre devotion to this restless wanderer. I dream of journeying with you and do not know, now, what will or won't happen. I have my dreams and so do you, in this strange world of cynicism and conveniences built up on other cynicisms and conveniences through year after year, in this cute little old city, part old and part new. I lay next to you and type. You lay next to me and sleep. You'll work tonight. In another week I'll go home and then it will be months upon months before I will likely touch your face again, but for now I'm here, and the world isn't perfect and dramatic just because I'm here. I am not quite able to whisk you away into a fairytale as much as I might like to.

But you tell me you needed this... Well then, it was worth it, and that's that.

Rest well, my darling.
Perhaps some other day I will hold you to my side when I go, and you will go with me. Not this time.