The written loom

Letter from the Other Shore

Paul,

I do not know if it’s day or night where you are now..
Here, we have no hours..
Only small pulsing moments, like breathing..
And one of those moments carried me to you..

I write to you for the first time, but it feels like we’ve been speaking for years..

Perhaps because the silence that held us always knew how to speak before we did..

It is not wrong to lose one’s love..
If you hold it too tightly, it slips away..
If you let it go, it may return in another form, not as it once was, but deeper.. Wilder.. Truer..
Perhaps what you thought had ended was never ending at all.. only becoming something that no longer looks like love, yet holds more power than love ever could..

Lately, I feel a warmth around me.. a strange softness, where all is still and weightless..
Something between memory and presence.. As if something from you touches me, without touching..
As if you call me, without words.. And I hear you..

Don’t ache because I am no longer there.. I did not truly leave.. I simply crossed into water..

Into the lake where we drowned a love too frightened to know its own name.. Into the hush that knows your skin by heart..

If you ever walk its edge again, do not turn your gaze away. Look inside.. You might see my shadow smiling at you..
You might feel my hands, not on you, but within you, where no more questions live..

I write freely now.. Perhaps because there is no fear of not being understood.. Perhaps because it no longer matters whether this is read or not.. I simply let it be written,  the way tears fall, or the way music begins inside dreams..

And if you ever return here, not with your body, but with your remembering.. bring me something small..

A fragment of that self who once loved me without asking anything in return.. The one who watched the lake without expecting answers..

I will remember you, Paul..
But not as you were..
As you are when you are no longer trying to be anything at all..

With a quiet voice,
Talitha

In another world, someone will read these words and answer them..
But what happens when the answer sinks without a sound?

Next: A letter lost to silence, and the man who cannot stop writing..