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.)