Our Live Together, Our Lives Apart

Morning arrives on the first rays of sunlight that trickle through parted blinds before alighting my bedroom in a deep amber as it passes through a half-empty bottle of bourbon. My hand reaches out, past the vacant space beside me and silences the buzzing alarm.


Slowly my eyes open to behold the angel beside me. You're beautiful at this hour, your body wrapped only in the soft linens that adorn our bed. Each breath you take raises and lowers your breasts like ocean swells lulling some wistful sailor home, a silent chorus of beauty and wonder. Each breath you take steals mine away.


Slowly I navigate this routine morning commute, my hand fidgeting with the radio in an effort to amuse my wandering attention. Ice forms on my car's windshield today, for the heater is never warm enough to stave off the cold.


You turn over in bed, wrapping both your arms and a sea of blankets around us. "Let's stay like this today," you say. "All day?" I ask. You smile, squeezing me tighter so that our bodies melt together. "Forever Bobby."


The office hums with the glow of fluorescent lights above. A pungent aroma of cheap coffee fills the halls, strong enough to widen my eyes that stare blankly into a computer screen.


We make love for an hour, ceasing only when euphoria and exhaustion overtake us. You let me play with your hair, twirling it in my fingers and letting it fall onto the nightstand where I see a framed picture from our wedding day. We stand before each other at the altar, our friends and family gathered on either side, you in the whitest of gowns...and never a more beautiful sight have my eyes beheld.


I slice my finger on a sheet of paper in some trivial report and wince.


I toy with the wedding ring around my finger and smile.


Hours pass slowly, my time split between angry clients, impatient bosses, and deadlines that wait for no man. I am exhausted, worn down by the continual beating of a drum that demands an ever faster march, which I cannot endure.


Hours pass quickly, my time spent only with you, talking and sharing our hearts. Our attention is given only to each other and I feel exhilarated, alive, lifted ever higher by the love of a woman who asks for nothing save my devotion, which I gladly offer.


My workday is over and I relinquish my suit and tie for tennis shoes and sweatpants as I go for a run around the National Mall. The air is crisp, filled with stinging rain that batters my face and freezes it into the expressionless stare of the countless statues that adorn this city on a hill. It is cold, so very cold.


I hear them running up the stairs, giving us but a moment to reclaim our modesty before the bedroom door flies open and our children come bounding in. "Daddy, you promised me a piggyback ride," our youngest daughter exclaims, and as I hoist her onto my shoulders, our other daughter, already six now, asks you to comb her hair and remove the tangles that always seem to accompany her evening bath. We laugh, we talk, we love...for we are a family, and everything is so very warm.


The day is nearly over and I cook myself a light dinner before beginning my nightly routine of writing my second novel, a work that your memory continually attempts to invade. Whether or not I shall allow it to do so is left undetermined, the decision left solely to the wisdom and direction of my pen. But I lay down my pen this day, for the hour is late and I shall soon retire to bed.


After tucking our daughters into bed, I return to our bedroom where we once again succumb to temptation before eventually settling into our nightly custom of cuddling beneath the blankets. Our hands lace together, fingers intertwined. I play with the wedding ring that adorns your finger and say:

"I remember the moment I gave you this Ornela."

"It was the happiest of my life," you reply.

"You promised me that day that this ring would never leave your finger."

"And it never will."

We make love.


I go to bed alone.


I kiss you goodnight.


I write you this story in my journal, letting the words on a computer screen become my only voice to the woman I love.


I look deeply into your eyes and tell you that I am in love with you.


You read the words in my journal for the thousandth time, wondering why you are letting me speak to you again this night, yet secretly knowing the true reason all along.


You speak the words that set my heart aflame, for you say that you love me. You retreat into my arms, into the arms of a man who holds tight the woman he loves. And as sleep overcomes us tonight, we make our voyage into the sandman's abode together, a world where even the sweetest dreams can never equal the happiness we have found with each other.


Another day apart.


Another day together.
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Six months ago today you told me goodbye. You sent me a short e-mail saying everything was over and that you would not be writing me again. You let me go that day, or at least that is what I believed at the time. But six months later you still read my journal...you still let me tell you that I love you. Ornela, I know that you still read my journal. I have always known. And I know that because you still let me speak to you every day, you never let go...just as I have never let go of you either.


On our first night together at Harvard, I told you three simple words: "You are her". I waited my whole life to find you. I waited my whole live to tell you those words. You are the only woman who has ever heard them, the only woman who has ever seen this part of me -- the only woman I have ever fallen in love with. I knew then, just as I do today, that you are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. If I am just another man in a long string of those you have once loved, then so be it, but you are something so much more than that to me. Everything I have told you over the past few months, every word I say, is but a poor imitation of a feeling I have for you that I know not how to express. I have given you my words, but I want more than anything else to simply give you me.


Our lives together versus apart are so very different, an essence I have tried to capture in this story. I think about what it would be like to share our lives together, holding each other, sharing our hearts, and falling more in love each day.


So much time apart -- six months, three years, and possibly the rest of our lives. I cannot fill the years with endless words, for such a task is beyond the reach of even the most prolific penman, of even the most forlorn lover. This journal is just an illusion Ornela, a desert mirage that lets you feel my love without my touch. But I am not this journal. I am a man behind the words...a man who has fallen in love with you. I have nothing left to give you save these final words:


I am in love with you Ornela, and always will be.

Memory

Like a thief in the night you come to steal away my soul. Torturous, rapacious in your appetite for all things dear, you invade my serenity without purpose or direction, fluttering through my troubled mind like a butterfly lost in flight.


You are both a trespasser and welcome guest, a continual source of deepest grief and unbridled joy. You greet me when first my eyelids part to receive the light of a new day, and you are with me still in those last moments of consciousness when the film between this world and that of dreams stretches so thin that reality surrenders to desire. That is when you draw nearest. That is when you whisper in my ear all the sweet promises of what once was, yet never again will be.


You infect me with illness, yet offer a cure that has never made me feel more alive. You break my heart, tearing it to ribbons, yet offer needle and thread to mend its pieces back together. You are everything that hurts, everything that heals. You are both enemy and friend. You are everything to me, for you are memory. And you, sweet memory, are all I have left of her.
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You told me that when I broke your heart three years ago, my memory was everywhere. My memory haunted you, just as yours haunts me today. I see your face a thousand times a day, in every beautiful woman I pass, and I think about you more often still, for you are both my first thought when I awaken each morning and the last before sleep overtakes me. I am not ashamed to admit that I still think about you so often Ornela, for to me it is the most natural thing in the world. When I remember you, when your memory fills my mind's eye, I am happy...and so I hold onto your memory, as tightly as I should have held onto you all those years ago.


I am sitting in my office in DC, writing you this poem when all manner of work that ought to be occupying my time and energy goes neglected. You are sitting in your home in Boston, reading my words to you from a diary that bridges the distance between us tonight. I am thinking about you in this moment and I wonder, if somewhere out there, you are thinking about me too.

The Man Behind the Curtain

First Letter

Dear Ornela,

I thought we would be together today, I really did. It seems foolish, I know, to suppose that you would have driven all the way down from Boston to DC just to see me this weekend, but I hoped that maybe after all this time apart your feelings for me had changed. You read my journal every day and I have always believed that you read it to feel close to me. I just want to be close to you too.

I have tried so hard this past year to be the man you always deserved, the man I should have been for you when you gave me your heart. So I wrote you letters....dozens and dozens of letters. I wrote you letters in this journal to try to show you how much I love you and that I truly am a different man than the one who told you goodbye all those years ago. I changed into a better man than who I was before...I changed for you Ornela.

Why you read my journal everyday is likely to forever remain a mystery to me. I kept hoping that you were waiting for me to say something profound, that you were waiting for me to say just the right words to open your heart and make you fall in love with me all over again, but after so many months of trying to show you how much I love you, I do not know what more I can give you. I do not know what more I can do.

Will you do something for me? Will you read an entry in my journal that I wrote over six years ago on December 10th, 2008 entitled "Tristen's Wish"? This was the first time I ever wrote about you, only three days after our first date. When I read those words that I wrote six years ago, I know without any doubt that you are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, but if you can read those words and still feel nothing for me, then I guess it really was never meant to be.

I wish that I could look into the future and see whether or not everything we have been through together over the past year is just a difficult chapter in what will ultimately be a lifelong love story, or if this truly is the end. You know how I feel about you...you know that I love you, but I can't keep doing this forever. I can't keep giving you my heart if it is not something you want. It hurts too much.

I told you once that my love for you is unconditional, and I have never wavered in that. Ornela, I have to know...do you still have feelings for me?

Hope

"I wish that I had taken the job in Boston," I say over the phone, looking out my apartment window to see just the tip of the Washington Monument in the distance.


"So why didn't you Bobby?" my dad asks.


His voice betrays his concern. Barely a month has passed since I arrived here in DC and already I am searching for greener pastures. A few short weeks calling the District my home yet again, and I am regretting my decision more than ever.


"Well...'" I stammer, "the job in Boston would probably have been a better fit professionally and..." My voice trails off, not by conscious effort but because the memory of a face I have not seen in so long suddenly fills my mind's eye. "I should have moved to Boston because...it's just that....that...that's where...."


"That's where she lives," my dad finally interjects, finishing my thoughts with a confession that I struggle to admit.


"Yeah dad...that's where Ornela lives."


"So why didn't you take the job in Boston and move up there if you want to be with her?" he asks.


I see your face. I see you waving goodbye. "Because she doesn't want me there dad. She doesn't want me in her city...she doesn't want me in her life."


"I see," he says. For several moments he says nothing more, letting the silence of our phone call pass the somber moments before adding, "You never know Bobby. Life has a funny way of working things out for the best when you least expect it. Maybe the reason you two needed to be apart for so long was to realize just how special what you had really was. You and Ornela might end up together after all. Never give up hope."


Our phone call ends and I look back out my window to see the full moon hanging in the barren night sky, alighting the roads north that lead all the way to Boston, all the way to a girl who I think about even now...and miss very much.


Ornela, four months ago when you kissed me in your car at Logan airport, you gave me the most precious of gifts...hope. Even though we were saying goodbye, I thought that we would only be apart for perhaps a month or two before our feelings for one another led us to start talking again and eventually reconcile. I thought that before winter had passed, we would share at least one more night shared together in Boston and that, perhaps, you would even ask me to move to the city to be with you. Never did I imagine that after all this time we would still be apart, for I have always thought that we would eventually be together. Even after I told you goodbye three years ago, deep down I still believed that our story was not really over, that somehow we would find each other again and never let go. I believed that, despite everything, we would make things work...we would end up together, but for the first time in my life I am beginning to lose hope.


Do you want me to stop Ornela? I know that you still read my journal...I have always known that -- it is the reason I believed you still had feelings for me, and the reason I believed we would someday be together again. But now I no longer know what to believe. Do you want me to stop writing my letters to you? Do you want me to let you go? All I want is to try, just one last time, to have a real relationship with you. I just want to hold you in your bed, talk to you about what is going on in your life, and fall asleep in each other's arms...and I want to do these things every day. That is all I have really wanted since the moment I sent you my first letter over a year ago.


I care about you so much Ornela, more than you will probably ever truly understand, and I just want for us to be a part of each other's lives again.



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In my last letter I told you that I would not do this again, but I would like to invite you to my home in DC this weekend. Once before, in April 2011, you traveled from Boston to DC to visit me for just one night. We spent all night in that hotel bedroom talking and holding each other close. Four years have passed since we saw each other in DC. Four months have passed since we saw each other at all. Ornela, can we see each other this weekend?

Snow

It's snowing. A million tiny flakes, each unique and guided by winter's invisible hand, fall gently upon the ground. Once so full of color, of green grass and autumn leaves, of robins red as burning coals and lilies blue as the deepest waters, the world falls silent beneath an icy blanket. The snows cover all. The snows erase all. The snows fall in Boston tonight, just as they did when I held you by your bedroom window all those years ago.

"Look Ornela, it's snowing," I said as my hands wrapped firmly around your waist and held you closely from behind. We stared out of your bedroom window, our eyes transfixed by the sea of white before us.

"It's beautiful," you whispered, letting your hands rest atop mine as our fingers intertwined. You turned around. We kissed. And the snows froze within our minds a moment in time, a moment I write of now, a moment I hope you remember with fondness.

When last we said goodbye some four months ago, never did I expect to see the snows fall again without you. Never did I expect winter to arrive so cold, or last so long, a winter that is bitterest because we are apart. To warm my heart this winter I have reached out to you numerous times, sometimes by text, other times through my letters, asking to see you again. My invitations first were declined, now they go ignored, so I will stop extending them. I will stop asking if I can call you or if we can see each other again. I will stop asking you to let me take you on a first date again, or go for a walk around Boston Common Park or The National Mall. I will stop asking you to do these things because I do not want you to spend time with me simply because you feel obligated to. Instead, I want you to spend time with me because you actually want to. I want our time together to be something that we both look forward to, that we both eagerly await. Every time we ever saw each other, from our first date at that Italian restaurant in Fairfax until that day three years ago when you wrapped your arms around me and greeted me at Logan Airport, you bore the most radiant smile that I have ever seen shine upon any woman's face. That's how I knew...that's how I always knew you loved me. But when you saw me again for the first time in three years on that cold October day at Harvard, no smile graced your face. Instead you appeared anxious, upset even, at my arrival. I would have given anything to see you smile in that moment, yet your face told me that my gifts, let alone my presence, were no longer welcomed.

I wish I had more to give you. I wish I knew what more I can do to make you happy. After so much time apart, I thought that my feelings for you would have died by now, but they have not. My feelings for you are just as strong now as they were a week ago, a month ago...they are just as strong as when I held you in bed on our last night together. Ornela, if my feelings for you have not died by now, they probably never will. I do not know why I still have feelings for you. I do not know why I cannot simply let you go and be free of you, the way you are obviously free of me. I suppose that was your intention of making me promise to try to find love with another woman. Though you likely have thought otherwise based on the content of my letters, I truly have kept my promise to you. In the four months that we have been apart, I have dated several women, all very briefly, in an attempt to honor my word to you. I am not doing this for me...I am doing this for you. I am doing this because you made me make a promise, but truthfully every date I have been on these past four months, every woman's hand that I have held, has been under false pretenses. I am not with them because I want to be; I am with them out of obligation to you. I do not see their smiling faces across the dinner table from me in some downtown DC restaurant...I see yours. It hurts to do this, but I am trying so hard to keep my promise to you Ornela, my only real strength coming from the hope that one day you will keep your promise too.

On Valentine's Day I sent you a text message that I knew you would not respond to. I did not send you my message to try to force you into a conversation that you did not want to have, but instead simply to let you know that I was thinking about you on that special day and that I still care very deeply for you.

What more can I give you Ornela? If you asked me to, I would drive all the way to Boston tonight, through the snow and ice, just to see you. The snows fall heavy in DC, just as they do in Boston. It is very cold tonight, and I miss you.

(I took this photo from atop the Bunker Hill Monument when I visited you three years ago. You stood beside me as we overlooked downtown Boston covered in snow -- beautiful, peaceful, a memory I will cherish always.)

Just to See You Again

"I'll see you again Ornela...I know I will."

These were the last words I spoke to you on that brisk Autumn day four and a half months ago. I stepped out of your car and walked to the airport terminal, wondering if you were watching me leave or had already driven away. I paused, looked back, and saw you there...waving goodbye. Everything within me wanted to walk back to your car; everything within me wanted to beg you to ask me to stay with you in Boston, to tell you that if you only asked those simple words I would never leave you again. Yet I kept walking, and once I arrived in the terminal I waited there for what seemed like an eternity...waiting, waiting, waiting for you to come running through those airport doors to find me and ask me to stay. But you never came, and so with a heavy heart I boarded my plane that day and left, uncertain if my last words to you would ever come true.

That day in the airport, I really did think that you would come find me. I really did think that you would stop me from boarding the plane and ask me to stay. Now, all this time later, I reached out to you again on Valentine's Day to ask if I could call you. I'm not sure how I expected you to respond, or even if I thought you would. After so much time apart, I hoped that maybe we could just talk, not about anything serious but instead about what has been going on in each other's lives. I suppose I just felt a bit like I did that day in the airport...I just wanted to talk to you again.

My reason for telling you this is not to induce sympathy or try to guide your behavior down a path you are unwilling to walk. My reason for writing these words is twofold: First, despite all the letters that I have written to you over the past year in this journal, this medium is simply that...a journal. This is my diary. This is where I record my innermost thoughts because it is cathartic and writing helps me cope with the deep and passionate feelings I have for you Ornela. Yet I write for another reason too. I write because this is the window through which you are able to witness my feelings for you; this is the lens through which you have chosen to see who I really am. But this lens is like a two way mirror, such that you can always look into my heart without ever having to open yours. This journal brings us close, yet always forms a wall between us. Ornela, you understand me very well through reading my words to you in this journal...but I want to understand you too. I want to know you, the real you, on the deepest level two people can experience. I want to listen as you tell me about all of your dreams for the future, all of your regrets from the past, all of your daily struggles and triumphs, and all of the little quirks that make you the amazingly unique person that you are. I just want to know you Ornela...I just want to share our lives with each other.

You have seen a side of me that no one else ever has, a side that even I did not know existed before I met you. Whenever I used to hear stories of people falling in love and the irrational things that love made them do, I scoffed at their behavior and wondered at how anyone could let such strong emotions override their better judgment. But then I met you. Then I fell in love with you. I do not know if you have ever fallen in love with anyone besides me Ornela, but you are the only woman I have ever fallen in love with, and it has been difficult for me to simply let that go. Maybe that is because I know how rare it is to find someone you truly care about, someone you would do anything for, someone who cares about you just as much and is willing to move mountains simply to see you smile. That is how I feel about you...that is how I hope, deep down, you still feel about me too.

Maybe I should have moved to Boston for that job with Starbucks, but the only reason I did not was because I thought that you did not want me there. Would things between us be different if I had chosen to move to Boston rather than DC? Would you have let me take you on a first date again, let me hold your hand as we walked through Boston Common Park in the snow. Would you have invited me back to your apartment where we would spend all night talking before falling asleep in each other's arms. If I had moved to Boston, would we be together right now? I don't know, but even now I still have hope that you will ask me to see you in Boston again. If you ask, I will come.

I don't know what else to do Ornela. I don't know what else to say that hasn't already been said or what more I can give you. You know so much about me through reading my letters, yet there is so much about you I still don't understand, why you are still reading my journal most of all. What do you get out of reading my journal? Are these letters merely entertainment to you, or something more? And who am I to you Ornela? Am I simply some relic from your past, one of many suitors who have vied for your love and attention over the years? Or was what we had different, an uncommon bond that was unlike anything either of us has ever experienced with anyone else...a relationship that was special in a way that we both intuitively recognize?

I write these letters because you read them. When you are ready, I hope that you will ask me to put down my pen and say my words to you in real life.

Ornela, can we take things slow this time? Can we take our time to rebuild the trust and intimacy we once shared? May I please give you a call just to talk...or if you'd like, to maybe even play a game of Battleship or two, just for old time's sake ;-)

Happy Valentine's Day Ornela

Happy Valentine's Day Ornela.

You have been on my mind today and I have wanted to talk to you, just to hear about what is going on in your life and how you have been since we last spoke.

I miss you very much. I wish that tonight, of all nights, we were together.

Ornela, I would like to call you if that is alright. Can we talk?

The Gold Coin

Once upon a time there lived a boy who was the most spirited of sorts. Every day, from morning til dusk he spent his hours exploring the forests or running through fields of dandelions and lilies that grew wild near his home. Within the forests a small stream flowed that was full of brim and trout that turned the waters a soft pinkish hue, so great were their numbers. With his fishing rod resting atop one shoulder and a bag of fresh bait draped over the other, the boy frequently enjoyed many summer afternoons sitting beside the cool waters while the biting fish provided a day's entertainment.

One day, while reeling in an especially large trout, the boy was startled by uproarious laughter just upstream. Forgetting his fishing gear on the river bank, he walked in the direction of the laughter to discover an old man splashing about in the rushing waters. The old man lifted and kicked his legs high in the air, his arms flailing about uncontrollably while his long, white beard twirled around him like a cotton tornado. He was dancing, but more than dancing, he was laughing, smiling, and shouting praises to heaven for reasons the boy knew not. But as the boy drew closer, his presence was spotted and the old man ceased his celebration, instead looking only at the boy who stared at him with an inquisitive smile.

 "Your laughter can be heard far down the river bank," the boy said, still wondering at the reason for the old man's jubilee. "Why are you so happy?"

The old man's laughter momentarily subsided but his smile was no less broad.

"My happiness comes from the rare pleasure that only a man of many years can feel, for I have found something I once thought lost forever...something I lost when I was only a child such as yourself." The old man motioned for the boy to come near, which he did with curious trepidation.

"Found something?" the boy repeated. "You men like a big trout that you have been fishing for in this stream?"

"No, no my child. Something far more valuable. Here, look for yourself."

The old man held out his hand to reveal his prize, a gold coin that sparkled and shone bright in the afternoon sun. Its surface had been polished smooth by the stream's running waters so that one side bore the old man's reflection while the other showed the boy's. Both stared at the coin in awe until the old man finally said, "Years and years ago, so many that my mind can no longer recall, I lost my gold coin in his very stream. My heart was broken at its loss and never again did I believe I would find it, but I have spent a lifetime searching for it, only to have finally found it today!"

He laughed again, but seeing how the young boy's face glowed with excitement at the mere sight of such a coin, the old man did the most curious thing. He kneeled down in the running waters to look the boy in the eyes, extended his hand and said, "My years are many, and soon all my worldly possessions will sift through my fingers like the sands through an hourglass. What good are gold and riches to those who have not the time left to enjoy them? I know what I shall do. I shall give my treasure to you my child, that you may reap the rewards of this gold coin in ways I never did. I give you this gold coin, to have and to hold."

The old man placed the coin within the boy's open palm as he stared in amazement at the unexpected gift.

"But I do not deserve this coin," the boy protested.

"No, you don't," the old man conceded. "It is a gift. Treasure it, be thankful for it, enjoy it...but never, ever lose it; for once such a treasure is lost, it will not be easily replaced. Once this treasure is lost, you will spend all the days of your life searching for it again, only to find not the gold coin you were looking for, but instead a lifetime of regret."

The boy looked again at the coin which felt light in his hand. "What does an old man like you know about loss?" he asked.

The corners of the old man's mouth lifted, but only momentarily as his smile soon surrendered to a more somber expression. "Youth has the power of optimism, for boys and young men believe that, much like the running waters we now stand in, there will be always be a stream of never-ending gold coins to fill their purse. But older men know that such streams eventually run dry, and once a gold coin is lost, a man may spend his entire life in search of another, only to find that his treasure is forever gone."

"I don't understand," the boy replied.

"I pray you never have to," the old man said, and with that he stepped out of the river onto the muddy banks to walk some deserted path that led into the forest. The boy watched him walk deeper into the woods until at last the old man disappeared.

For the next several days the boy was inseparable from his newly acquired gold coin. He spent countless hours polishing it to ensure it maintained its mirrored gleam and would often hold it within his hand wherever he went to ensure that it was not lost. But as time passed, these routines became less frequent, his treasure became less prized, until at last the gold coin was discarded somewhere deep within his trouser pockets where it remained lost and forgotten.

Months passed until one day the boy ventured near the stream again for an afternoon of fishing. Though normally he reeled in several large trout before nightfall, fortune had not been kind this day and the hours passed without even a single bite. Induced by boredom, the boy began collecting stones from the riverbed, some placed in his pockets while others he sent skipping across the stream. With pockets now full, he reached inside to find a particularly smooth stone the seemed perfect for skipping. The boy sent it flying with all his might, watching it skip a dozen times across the still waters before flashing a brilliant golden glow just as it sink beneath the surface. Immediately a feeling of dread overcame him as he watched the golden coin, a treasure he once prized above any other, disappear forever. But this feeling lasted but an instant, for no sooner had his golden coin been lost than the boy decided to walk upstream just a bit so that he might find the old man and persuade him to replace his gold coin with another, perhaps even one that was more beautiful still.

For hours the boy waited. He waited until the last rays of sunlight finally disappeared beneath the horizon, yet still the old man did not arrive.

"Oh well," the boy thought to himself. "Some unforeseen business must have delayed his arrival. Surely he will come tomorrow and I will meet my old friend then."

Tomorrow came, and just as the day before the boy patiently awaited the old man's arrival at the riverbank. But as the hours passed in solitude, the boy began growing increasingly anxious. He unconsciously felt within his pockets, almost expecting to find the gold coin hidden deep within, before remembering that he had so carelessly tossed it away. He missed the gold coin, longed for it even, and as another night fell with no return of either the old man or his beloved coin, the boy could finally stand his frustration no more and broke down in tears on the bank of that cold, lonely stream. He wept. He wept all night until he cried himself to sleep.

As the sun crested the morning horizon, it shone upon a new day...and a new man. Gone was the carefree boy of yesterday, replaced instead by a man whose maturity was hastened by the pangs of regret. The boy had grown up, his eyes suddenly opened, and the carefree frivolity of youth yielded to the true understanding of what he had lost. He had lost something very precious to him, something he had taken for granted and foolishly cast aside, and now -- with the advent of wisdom spurred by his pain -- he realized that he would spend the rest of his life searching for that lost gold coin.

He searched high and low throughout the stream, sifting through sand and silt with fingers turned raw by the frequency of this routine. Days became months, and months turned to years, yet still the man would not relent, still he would not abandon his search for the coin. In time the creases of his face deepened, the color of his hair whitened, until at last he gazed into the stream's reflective waters one day to see a familiar face staring back at him. It was a face he had not seen in many years, a face he last saw on that day so long ago when the laughter of an old man had aroused the curiosity of that boy he once was. But now, as he looked at the face of that old man in these waters, he realized it was not the face of his friend that met his gaze, but rather his own, transformed by years of hardship and loss into a grizzled specter of the boy he once was.

He yelled, cursing the heavens for a lifetime spent in fruitless pursuit of his gold coin. He pounded his fists into the riverbed, casting silt and sand high into the air with each frustrated blow until at last his fingers dug through the soft soil and hit upon something hard. His eyes widened, his fingertips stopped as they felt upon a surface smooth as glass that his hands hand not touched in many years. Summoning all his strength the man grasped firmly around the unseen object and ripped it from the riverbed, sending a spray of water skyward that sparkled in a thousand tiny droplets, yet soon gave way to the radiant golden glow of the coin the man held firmly in his hand. He clutched the coin tightly, holding it close to his chest so that it pressed snugly against his heart. He cried again, this time tears of joy, until those tears soon gave way to dancing and laughter that filled the air with the old man's elation.

"Your laughter can be heard far down the river bank," a small voice suddenly intruded. "Why are you so happy?"

The old man turned to see a small boy who had stumbled upon his celebration. He paused, remembering all those years before when it was he who had found the curious old man laughing and dancing in the river.

He smiled and said, "My happiness comes from the rare pleasures that only a man of many years can feel, for I have found something I once thought lost forever."

The old man summoned the boy closer and placed the gold coin within the child's hand.

"Guard this treasure as you would your heart, that you may never know the pain of losing both...that you will always remember the joy of this moment, when all you have been looking for your entire life is finally found."

The old man waded from the waters of the stream, having found again what he had lost all those years before. A lifetime of sorrow, a lifetime of struggle, a lifetime of wanting only to be reunited with his beloved gold coin -- for that opportunity, no matter how brief, he was willing to sacrifice all. He had found his beloved gold coin again; he had found what he was looking for...and he was finally happy.

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Ornela,

Over the past several months I have written you countless letters, but tonight I wanted to write you a story. For a long time I have simply told you how I feel about you, but by writing you a story I can show you. The stories that I write you are very personal to me, for they are showing you a very intimate part of my heart. Stories have always been my gift to you. When we were together I could never afford to buy you expensive gifts, or take you on exotic trips, but I could always give you the most cherished things to me...my stories. I gave you my stories because I always thought they made you happy, and I just wanted to see you smile.

You are the inspiration for all of my stories, and in this story you are the gold coin. Just like the boy who became an old man, I let go of something very dear to me, and once I realized what I had lost...it was too late. In my case, I let go of someone I love...you Ornela. Everything I have done since that realization, all of my letters, all of my stories, all of my actions over the past year have been made in an attempt to right that wrong. But unlike the story I just wrote, I don't know how ours will end. I don't know if I will find you again like the old man with his coin, or if you even want to be found. You see, I am not the author of our story...we both are. And I hope that you will pick up your pen and write me the words that are in your heart, just as I have written you the words that are in mine -- I hope that you will help me tell our story together.

Love,

Bobby

Taking a Chance

"Is this seat taken?" I hear a voice ask as I enjoy my lunch in the office cafeteria.

Looking up from my sautéed salmon I see a young woman holding a tray and motioning towards the open chair across my table. She awaits my reply, but for a moment sees only a confused expression as I glance to either side and notice the myriad vacant tables.

"Please, have a seat," I reply. "My name is..."

"Bobby," she interrupts, much to my surprise. "I've seen you around the office. We sit a few cubicles away from each other and I've been meaning to introduce myself. My name is Heather."

"Heather....well, it is nice to meet you."

"You too," she says. She fidgets a bit in her seat and uses her fork to push the food around her plate until finally she asks, "So, how do you like working at Freddie Mac so far?"

She smiles when she asks her questions. Her voice, trembling ever so slightly, betrays her anxiety but I do not mind. Rather, I find it endearing. It reminds me of someone from my past, a girl I used to know so long ago...she reminds me of you Ornela.

For an hour we talk over lunch. She tells me that she has lived in DC her entire life and asks if I have ever visited the city before moving here. I lie and tell her that this is my first time away from home. I do not tell her that I lived here six years ago. I do not tell her that this city is where I should have settled down with someone very dear to me. In a way I am telling her the truth, for coming back to DC this time feels so very different than my initial arrival. The thrill is no longer there. The magic is gone. I suppose that trying to rekindle the feelings you once had for something is always a struggle, and it is never quite the same the second time around.

This girl that I enjoyed lunch with reminded me so much of you Ornela. In appearance perhaps there were some incongruities, her hair slightly lighter, her face not quite so beautiful. But in mannerisms she was your twin. There was a gentleness about her that I have only ever felt with you, and for the first time in so very long I felt like I was with you again. For the first time in four months I felt like I was speaking to you apart from my letters.

My letters. My journal...my only voice to you. I have long since exhausted new things to say to you and am simply repeating myself at this point, but when I write I feel close to you, and that feeling alone gives me the strength to continue. If I knew that you were still reading this journal I would write you every day just to tell you that I have never forgotten you...just to tell you how much I still think about you Ornela. I have always believed that you are still reading my letters to you in this journal, but truthfully I do not know. To believe that you still read this journal is wishful optimism on my part, perhaps even a fool's hope. In reality, these letters I write probably go unread by you or anyone else. But if you are still reading my journal after four months apart, after three years since we last held each other close, then I know it must be because you are trying to keep your promise to me...a promise to try to rekindle a relationship we began through our simple letters. Do you remember Ornela? Do you remember the letters that you used to write me too? On one of our last nights together three years ago you showed me all of the letters we exchanged on eHarmony in the months before we met. You had saved everything...every letter where we first got to know each other, every story from our past that we were just beginning to share, every loving word that we had ever said to one another. If you still have those letters, I hope that you will read them again, for they helped bring us closer together. They let us into each other's hearts.  

After being in DC for only a few weeks now, I have made a sobering realization: I should have moved to Boston for the job with Starbucks. It is the job that I really wanted rather than the one I accepted in DC, but I didn't move to Boston because I thought it would be unbearably painful to live in the same city with you without ever being able to see you. Now I see that the city I live in makes no difference. We could live on opposite sides of the world or even next door to each other and I would still feel just as distant from you. Maybe moving to Boston would have somehow changed things between us. I kept imagining that one day I would hear a knock at my door and I would open it to see you standing there. It seems ridiculous to hope for such things, I know, but I always remembered the words you told me in that first letter back in June: "My wish was to come find you in Atlanta (and) hug you." I knew that if you were once willing to come find me, perhaps that day might finally come.

Despite  living 400 miles south of you, I still think about you every day. Whenever my mind is not distracted by work or the business of life, it usually reminisces over you. I wonder sometimes about how your day is going, if you are busy with work in the lab or out on the town having a good time with your friends. Sometimes I even wonder if you are reading this journal and thinking about me too, maybe as part of your morning routine, in a spare moment at work, or just before you go to bed. In those moments it is almost as if we are together again. It is almost as if you have asked me to be with you. I only wish that rather than speaking to each other through my journal we could see one another in person. Even now, if you asked I would leave everything in DC behind to be with you in Boston. I would quit my job tomorrow, pack everything into my car, and drive 400 miles north if you asked me to. I would do that -- for you Ornela. I would leave everything behind just to be with you.

You know me better than anyone in the world, and you know that I do not believe in anything supernatural, or gods, or silly superstitions. But I do believe in fate. I believe if two people are meant to be with each other, somehow, someway they will end up together. Their paths may occasionally go in different directions, so much so that at times the two people walking those paths might even lose sight of each other. But if they are truly meant to be together, their paths will always eventually intersect and bring them back together again. Our paths have diverged and reconnected more times than I can remember, and by all accounts we should have long since moved on by now, yet here we are right now, me speaking to you through my letters and you listening to my words. We are always drawn to each other. We are always drawn back together.

I cannot convince you to give our relationship another chance any more than I can convince a leopard to change its spots or a rainbow to change its colors. Nor can I convince you to fall in love with me again or even speak to me. These are things that are purely yours to give to whomever your heart chooses. But what I can do is simply tell you that I love you, that I will always love you, and that whether or not you ever choose to invite me into your heart again, I will never push you out of mine.

Maybe our timing was all wrong. Maybe the distance was too great for us to overcome. Maybe we really are just not right for each other. But we never got to try...we never got to have a real relationship to truly see if our love would make it, and I will always wonder what might have been if we had only taken that chance.

I still love you Ornela. I simply want to be with you.

One Year later

One year ago today I sent you a package containing a novel written for you and the following handwritten letter:

Dear Ornela,

In your hands you hold the past two years of my life, one of the most tumultuous periods in my life primarily because it was spent without you. Your absence has had a profound effect on both my life and this novel in ways I never could have imagined. What started out as a simple fantasy novel became a love story, our love story, and I have written it just for you. This novel is my love letter to you.

After so much time has passed, you probably think it strange that I could still have feelings for you, especially considering that your feelings for me have apparently long since disappeared. Two years have passed since last I saw you, but we have not been apart. You have been with me every day as I wrote. Your memory was there to inspire me when I needed new ideas and to encourage me when all hope of finishing seemed impossible. Writing this novel has taught me about commitment, sacrifice, and not giving up on the things that you truly care about. My dream was writing a novel, something that I never thought I would be able to do. And I was right, I couldn't...but we could. On my desk I kept a picture of us from when you visited me in Birmingham. Whenever the ink from my pen seemed to have run dry, I would look at your smiling face and the words would always return. You gave me the courage to keep going, to persevere even when I didn't know the outcome, but to try anyway. I have come to realize that relationships are that way too.

In the month since we last spoke, I have thought a great deal about what you said to me and your decision to not see each other. Truthfully, your words hurt. I always thought that no matter what happened between us, you would always still want to see me, but I began to understand that although I desperately wanted you in my life I was no longer an important part of yours. Never again would I see you, never again would I hear your voice. I realized that although I still loved you, you no longer cared for me...and my heart was broken. But then I realized something else. The pain that I am feeling now is the same pain that I have caused you so many times before. Every time I said goodbye, every time I ignored your feelings, every time I was unsure of my own I broke your heart a little more until finally it could not be put back together. You no longer trust me. You no longer trust me not to break your heart again and that is why you have guarded it. And that is my fault. I am to blame for the pain in our relationship and I finally understand how deeply I hurt you.

Twice I have asked you to open your heart and twice you have said no, and I have no right to ask for a third time. So I am going to ask you to do something else. I am going to ask you to remember, all the way back to two years ago when we waited at a bus stop on a frigid Boston night. After dinner we waited in the terminal as the snows fell, a temptation that led us outside to enjoy the evening. The streets were ours...not another soul in sight. We had a snowball fight that ended with you wrapped up in my arms. I told you that I loved you. You said the same. We kissed. It was the happiest moment of my life, and as we stood there looking into each other's eyes I should have asked you to be mine. But the moment passed, and with it my opportunity that evening to make things right, an opportunity that you will decide whether or not was lost forever.

I do not want what we had. I want something so much more. I want a relationship with you. I want to have a real relationship with you, one where we see each other every day, on our good days and bad. If you ask, I will move to Boston just to be with you. I will do that because I know what I have lost and I would do anything to get it back. You are the closest person I have ever gotten to, the one person I withheld nothing from. For three years you were more than just my lover...you were my best friend. You are the woman I was supposed to marry.

I asked you once what it felt like to fall in love with someone. You told me that it meant you would do anything for that person. I finally understand because that is how I feel about you right now, which is why I will do the hardest thing I know to do. If your feelings for me are truly gone, I will go away. No more letters, no more phone calls, no more attempts to contact you in any way. You deserve to be able to carry on with your life without my constant intrusions and I will let you go...I promise.

Writing this novel changed me. My characters are all fighting for love and they showed me what lengths a man will go to for the woman he loves. People change. I changed. I hope that one day I will hold you in my arms again. I hope that it is not too late to show you the man I have become, the man you always wanted me to be. You made me happy and I hope, more than anything else, that I made you happy too.

I am in love with you Ornela. I will always love you.

Te dua,

Bobby

Before I sent you this letter last February, I reflected for a very long time on whether or not I was truly prepared to ask you back into my life, and what's more, to ask you to be my girlfriend. I knew that the sacrifices I was asking you to make for another chance at our relationship were significant, and because of that I had to be sure, completely sure that I was ready and mature enough to have a committed relationship with you. I was...I was ready to give myself completely to you. And so, with trembling hands that sealed the envelope closed, I sent you my letter and awaited your response. I had no idea what your reaction might be to my unexpected sentiments, whether you would be confused, joyful, uncertain, or even angry. But I had fallen in love with you Ornela...and I had to tell you.

With this journal entry, we have come full circle. Over the past year I have told you everything that is in my heart, and every time you read my journal we are -- for a moment -- together again. You invite me into your heart every time you read my words. When you read my journal, what are you hoping I will tell you Ornela? What are you waiting for me to say? You know how I feel about you...you know how deeply my feelings for you run. I have written so much about the time we shared together because those moments were the happiest of my life, but I don't want to keep rehashing the past. I want to make new memories with you. I want to stop writing about our time together and instead simply be together. I just want for us to be a part of each other's lives.

We are two imperfect people, both of us filled with regrets for the decisions we have made in the past. But maybe it is those imperfections, and the fact that we still care very deeply for one another despite them, that adds a deeper intimacy to the feelings we have for each other. On one of our last nights together three years ago we laid in bed and watched the movie Goodwill Hunting. One scene in particular has always touched me, as its words seem especially pertinent to our relationship.

Neither one of us is perfect, but I have known for a long time that you are the perfect woman for me. You're different, you're unique, you're special in a way I can't even describe but which I intuitively recognize and am attracted to -- you just make me happy Ornela. Whether or not I am the perfect man for you, I do not know; that is your decision to make. But I hope that I at least still make you smile...I hope I make you happy.

A year has passed since I sent you my first letter. Four months have passed since we last saw one another. I miss you very much...much more so than I could ever hope to convey in all of the letters that I have written you.

Ornela, can we see each other?

Close to You

"Bobby, you have to stop," he says, handing me another beer as we sit at opposite ends of his kitchen table.

I sip lightly on darkened stout and say nothing.

"You can't keep writing her, not if you ever want to get over her."

He's right of course. He always has been. Ever since we were those two scrappy kids running wild through the woods near our homes in Dothan, my dearest childhood friend Simon has listened as I pour out the troubles of my heart. Now, as we sit together in his North Carolina home, a mere stop on my drive north to Washington D.C., he listens as I tell him about you Ornela. He listens as I tell him about all the letters I have written you over the past year, about how I traveled all the way to Boston just to see you, and about why I turned down the job in Boston when you told me goodbye.

"So she's the reason why you were looking for jobs up in Boston all this time," Simon says, shaking his head. "All of us back home thought you had lost your mind traveling all the way up there just for a job, but it looks like you had ulterior reasons for wanting to live in Boston. I guess you were willing to give up everything for some woman."

"Not for just some woman," I reply. "For her..."

Two weeks later I sit in my Washington D.C. apartment writing you this letter. Even now, I do not know if I made a mistake accepting the job offer in DC instead of Boston. I know that I wanted to move to Boston, very badly, but not because of a job...I wanted to move to Boston to be close to you. But when you told me not to move to the city for you, I knew that I had to respect your wishes. I could not move to Boston if you did not want me there because I felt that I would be forcing myself upon you, and I just couldn't do that anymore. So I live in DC yet again, wondering if perhaps one day we might pass each other somewhere on a walk through the National Mall. Part of me hopes that when you graduate you will move back to DC to be near your family. Perhaps then we might have the chance to enjoy the relationship we began six years ago in this very city.

Giving up the opportunity to live in Boston was difficult, but keeping the promise you made me make on our last day together is far harder...yet I am doing it. I kept my promise to you last Saturday night with the girl I took to dinner in Chinatown. We laughed over Pad Thai as I regaled her with silly stories about "une pesos" that I used to tell you. She smiled and asked me to come back to her apartment somewhere in Adams Morgan, but when I looked into her eyes I saw only your face, and so with only a slight kiss on the cheek I let her go. A few days later I found myself with another woman, a pretty young Russian whom I met at work who accompanied me on a stroll across the National Mall as we enjoyed our first date together. She teaches me some simple Russian phrases as we walk, the same way you taught me a few words of Albanian on our solitary walk in front of the Capitol six years ago. I mispronounce everything she says which makes her smile, but as she leans closer to hold my hand I instinctively pull away, not because of any aversion towards her but because even in this moment my thoughts are of you. I don't want to share these experiences with another woman. I want to share them with you Ornela.

In the long months that we have been apart from each other, I have asked myself if it would have been better if we had never met all those years ago. If we had never met, we never would have spent countless sleepless nights mending our broken hearts. We never would have cried with each other that night last March when we spoke on the phone and confessed that even after all these years apart we were still in love with each other. If we had never met, we would have lived our entire lives without knowing that the person we gave our hearts to, the person we loved, simply walked away. But if we had never met we also never would have laughed with each other, or stayed up all night in bed in Charleston, Panama City, DC, or Boston simply sharing our hearts and confessing the deepest secrets within. If we had never met, we never would have fallen in love, and even knowing what I do today, even knowing that you would walk away, I would do it all over again...I would endure having my heart broken a thousand times over simply to have shared those special nights with you. The moments are worth it. You, Ornela, are worth it.

Things don't have to be like this. We don't have to communicate only through my online journal. I just want for us to be close again. I just want everything between us to be like it used to be. You may think that is impossible, that there is no going back, but I still have hope for us Ornela because I know that we still have feelings for each other. Despite everything that has happened between us, somehow, someway, our feelings for each other are still alive. I know that you still have these feelings because you are still reading my journal...I have always believed that. If I believed that you no longer read my letters to you in this journal I would stop writing, but I am going to ignore the advice that my friend Simon gave me and I am going to keep writing you. I am going to keep writing you these letters for the same reason that you keep reading them...we still have feelings for each other, feelings that I hope will one day bring us together again.

I just want for us to be close again. I hope...I hope that you will talk to me so that we can laugh together, share our triumphs and struggles, and simply be a part of each other's lives.

I miss you Ornela.