The Love Letters of Cappi & Ophelia

Cappi,  

 I told you a story once about the world crumbling as we made love. The walls fell, the floors dropped away, it was raining, or snowing, something light and cool falling on our bare skin. The only thing that saved me was your heat, your strong arms.

    You need me to be the kind of woman who can hold you up, but everything just tumbles down around me. I am no architect, no mason, no electrician. The lights we’ve burned out will stay dark forever, but we have new fires to build, at least, among the rubble, the destruction, and whatever is left of us after the madness of love.

Still yours,

Ophelia

dictionaryofobscuresorrows:

n. the smallest measurable unit of human connection, typically exchanged between passing strangers—a flirtatious glance, a sympathetic nod, a shared laugh about some odd coincidence—moments that are fleeting and random but still contain powerful emotional nutrients that can alleviate the symptoms of feeling alone.

Cappi,

I remember the tent, love. I remember how hot it was when we were on another adventure, with our dingy, curry-smelling room sitting and waiting for us. It was hot that summer in the city. Too hot for us to stay put, so we threw everything we wanted - journals, pens, our ragged copy of In Watermelon Sugar, in our pack and left. New Mexico was bad, but beautiful. Painfully, colorfully hot, wrecked in waves of sun, our eyes blurred with dust and dryness.

But I didn’t need to see anything, when it started to get dark and we pitched the tent in the sand and could count every star in the sky. You named them all Ophelia, and kissed the back of my neck, pulling me into that tent where the air was still and hot. We crashed our bodies together, making them slippery, then emerged naked from our shelter to let the sweat disappear, quick as light.

I rolled us cigarettes, and we sat up in the cool night air until our eyes ached for sleep. We couldn’t believe a sky could be so big, and us so small.

I have driven that highway so many times, for years, looking for a trace of us in the cracked dirt. I never see anything but stars, forever stretched away from me. I know you are in them somewhere, but I can’t find you, and the ache is too much.

-Ophelia

Ophelia-

Loving you never broke me. But that day on the river did.  At least a little.  I’m not ready to talk about that yet.

I’d rather remember that day in Missouri – it was Joplin – not just any day, it was Thanksgiving, and the local who brought us our first Thanksgiving meal together. We ate on paper plates with plastic forks crouched on our duffle bag on the side of the I-70 entrance ramp headed West.  But we didn’t make it very far west that day.  There were plenty of days like that, and though at the time they were sometimes uncomfortable, I look back fondly on them now. Funny how I forget sometimes being hot, sometimes cold, often thirsty, hungry, tired and cranky and instead remember the fun we had making each other laugh.  Reading to each other, dreaming of the future together, making love in that little tent of ours.  I would rather talk about our first day in the city we came to love and how exciting it was to see the impossibly large numbers of people and cars and buses, thrilling, but it might have been a daunting, even a little frightening if you hadn’t been there with me.  Do you remember seeing the Mission for the first time?  The sights and sounds and wonderful smells, so foreign to us: we had never been farther than the occasional trip to Greensboro in our young lives before the day I talked you into coming on an adventure with me.

Do you remember our first home together, that filthy residential hotel in the Mission that reeked of curry?  You never seemed to mind, but I hated it and would open the window no matter how cool the night air, encouraging the smell from the tacqueria below to at least try to battle the overpowering stench of curry. 

Our second day we must have walked miles, all the way through Chinatown and North Beach.  Do you still have the picture we had someone take of us underneath the sign “Jack Kerouac Alley?”  I wish I could see that picture again and remind myself how young and hopeful we were then.  And happy.  We were, don’t you think?  At least on that day.  Later we took the 38 bus out to the ocean and stepped in the Pacific for the first time.

That reminds me of the day on the river again.  But I’m still not ready to think about that.

-Cappi

Cappi,

When you saved me from the water, that night, from myself, and screamed into the sky over my stillness, I thought it meant we were done with longing. 

I am ready to walk back into the water, now. These bones have crumbled away and no amount of flesh or word is enough to hold me up. I know it’s too much, to ask you to save me when you can barely save yourself. 

The only hope I have is that we can make something whole of ourselves, yet, even if it takes two of us to make one. Love me, though it breaks you.

-Ophelia

Sweet Ophelia:

I once knew we were in Missouri, not Kansas.  I once knew where we were going. But I seem to have lost my map.  I will try to find it again and will let you know if I have any luck.  In the meantime know I love you - I haven’t forgotten that.

Cappi

Dear Cappi,

Do you remember when we were in Kansas? I think it was Kansas. I woke early, sat under the bridge where we’d slept, studied our map. I had you, then, to show me where we were, where we wanted to go.

Yesterday, I couldn’t leave my city. I drove three different ways, not sure which one was right, turning around and around. You are the map of my heart. Without you, I don’t know where to go, or why.

I love you forever,

Ophelia