Letter to my lover

By Leah Wainwright, Barnsley College

I found myself drifting back into your arms today, lulled by the larks’ sweet cries, and the receding strands of daylight, into the memory of you. I look to the glen and find skies streaked with emulsions of aureate and vermilion, and I think of the lustrous rays collecting like melted gold above your clavicle. I often wonder if the memories compacted within my mind do you justice. I question whether or not I dreamt of your aura, the same aura that is steeped in rose petals and jasmine, or if there is some segment of my imagination whose sole purpose is to forge ties between the real and the desired. Even now, I find myself yearning for your presence, committing thoughts to words that pour from pen to page like blood from a wound.

I long for infinite summer nights spent by your side, gazing into star-stained skies through the scope of your moss-coloured eyes; for the weight of your hand over mine, our palms enveloped in wordless prayer; for the declaration of your love, where it warps and wields mine beyond the concept of time.

My soul seems to have departed in silence, leaving behind a shell of what once was. When we are apart, a chasm of darkness, all-consuming darkness, manifests between the folds of my very being. It is incomparable, the acrid taste of grief burdened heavy on my tongue with the passing of each second with which we are apart.

And yet, here I lay, reminded of the sins of man. Where I should be buried within your arms, I find myself concealed below thick tendrils of smoke. The soot and ash flow through my system, reaping havoc below the skin until inexorable pain sparks a fire within my flesh. Screaming in the dark, my fingers claw at the darkness within, searching for the source of this pain, for an end to the violence. My blood calls to the gods above, to anyone who might lend an ear, a hand, a heart. But it is not them who can help me now.

Like a man possessed, I cry your name into the abyss in the hopes that my prayers will be answered. I twist my lips around each syllable, the final cadences falling from my tongue and unto you. I am bursting at the seams with each raw emotion that attaches itself to you, overflowing with the essence of your memory.

I want nothing more than to return to you once more, to envelop you in a blanket of never-ending love, yet here I lay forever. Beneath the smoke. Beneath the soil.

I curse both man and demons, those who lurk within the shadows of sin. For it was the deed of man that tore our love apart in the name of war.