Love letters, part one

“Que nos deseabamos desde antes de nacer.”

-Shakira.

I saw “Enduring Love” on some plane ride or other. In it, Daniel Craig’s character asked Samantha Morton’s character why she won’t sculpt him. She replies that she needs distance to sculpt someone, and she doesn’t want to gain distance, because he is her lover.

That’s the defense I use on you when you ask me why I don’t write about you. It’s not entirely without merit. But neither am I entirely innocent. Neither time nor distance should be daunting, if love is to exist outside physical points of reference. I forget about that.

I want to write about you. I want to start with your nighttime repertoire. In your sleep, you recite dinner recipes, and reasons for loving me (anything from “wonderful” to “you make the best cup of tea”). You visit landscapes straight out of Tolkien and Gregory Maguire, and you tell me about them. You want me to hold your hand as you walk down the roads going ever on and on.

I see the kid in you when you’re asleep (not in some creepy, vaguely pedophilic way either). I see you as you were pre-consciousness. You’re naked in more ways than one, my love.

When you sleep, you remain just as passionate for me as you are during the day, by the way. And that is no small thing. No small thing at all.

So this is what it’s like to be in love in the nighttime. Wondrous indeed (these last two words need to be pronounced in a thick Gulf accent).