Open Letter
Dear K:
I use your first initial only because you will recognize yourself here and because I want to keep your name for myself. Allow me this selfishness. But what I feel, what I’m feeling right now and have been feeling for this past year I want to say out loud. I want to send it out there to see if it bounces off of anything and returns to me in one form or another, and because we don't talk like I’m gonna talk here in person. You know I like this. I’m not, nor would I ever, suggest that we change that.
We live in a time when love is packaged and sold to us everywhere that we look. It's in every shop window, on every channel. It’s in this youtube clip, in that Instagram post. It's in bubblegum and fast food cheeseburgers and designer jeans. At times I’ve been a fiend for it and chased it harder than the needle or the bottle. I've seen you do it and you've seen me.
This narcotic is sold to us, almost always, as eros – romantic love, passionate love. But what of the others? Those drunken Greeks had words and winged gods that represented eight – fucking eight – different types of the stuff. So what of philia? What is love between friends? How can we make space for the kind of love that I feel for you? Because it's big, and it deserves room.
In fact, lately, it's bigger than everything. I know that I’ll see you on Sunday, our day together, and that we’ll talk and cook dinner. I’ll delight in seeing you taste bone marrow for the first time, an unsuppressable smile brightening your face with each bite, the fat glistening on your thin, strong, farmer’s fingers. We’ll get stoned and talk through the movie. If it was anyone else talking over Tommy Lee Jones I’d stand up and slap em in the face. But please, please keep talking.
Afterwards you’ll teach me how to make pie crust, and on your way out the door, you’ll conveniently leave the flour,the baking soda and the butter on the countertop. I’ll think about you and next Sunday every day that I see them there. One day I’ll get all these pie tins back to you.
Look, for just this one time I wanna say that I love you. We say it often. “I appreciate you.” “Thanks for being in my life.” This time I wanna say “love,” because that's what this is.
Isn’t it?
-N
