What I'm getting at... What I've been getting at

(how you live your life I don't care, but I'll sell my arms for you, hold your secrets forever) Ondaatje is always in my head. You must read The English Patient, and you must read Coming Through Slaughter.

One day I'll come swimming
beside your ship or someone will
and if you hear the siren
listen to it. For if you close your ears
only nothing happens. You will never change.

Here is what I believe, that my life... that your life, we're intertwined. There are some moments when I swear, I swear that we are connected through thoughts and soul and time, distance. My best dreams that I have are about you, every wish on every star, all of it. And those moments, little looks and words and all of that, the vagueness and things you said (I didn't have to say anything), that they are beads on a necklace- next to my heart always. I have this recurring dream where I'm running after you up stairs and you are always just out of the frame but I can still feel your presence, I know you were just there. I wake up and I swear you were just there. And through time zones we still have the same thought at the same time, through rain gutters, monsoon (this is how you touch other women /the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.) And intertwined as I believe our lives are, I've learned to be happy with our distance, with our different lives. You there, with her, and me here, with him. Or him. Or him or him or him but the point is, I'm okay with our separate lives. And this proves to me that I love you, and this proves to me also that I'm not in love with you. And everything, all of the moments that we think about, that we replay in our minds, those are absolutely sacred to me. And I keep them close, I keep you close. So we can keep our secrets, we can hide the moments down in our souls, deep in our memory. But when you see a certain sky, catch a certain scent... if someone talks like I do (when someone stands like you do) pull out one of our diamond moments (like the first time you took my hand) and float through it, and I will too. And after years we'll see each other and not tell anyone. I won't tell her and you won't tell him.

Just don't tell her, or anyone. I haven't. That was ours. This is ours. The other truth is that my heart is still mending from you, sometimes a love lost song or movie catches me off guard and I can't breathe for a second. But time is going by, and that's good. I expect to be completely over you in another two years time and you will just be an old friend, a memory. So let me be your old friend, memory.

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said
this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner's daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.
You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler's wife. Smell me.

These are the words that are constantly in my head. You don't have to understand them or like them, but I do. You must read The English Patient. You must read the chapter entitle Katharine. You don't have to even read the book, just read the story ("I don't miss you yet." "You will.") Just read it, okay? (How does this happen, to fall in love and be disassembled?)

Call me. Will you call me?