July 4, 2005

My darling--

To answer your question: Yes, I did receive your last letter. It arrived at my residence Tuesday last.

My delay in replying may, I fear, be taken as an indication that (notwithstanding your apology, which I do note in said letter) I remain deeply wounded by several remarks in your epistle prior.

Beloved, know you not how my heart aches for you? How it leaps with joy at the very thought of you? How it trembles with fear at the thought of losing you?--Then why question my fealty, my devotion, my allegiance? Whence this distrust and uneasiness on your part?

Indeed, have I ever in the course of our love--a course which has seldom run smooth, alas--given you reason to doubt my intentions? For perhaps what grieves me most is to see your beautiful eyes cloud over with wariness, fear, and doubt. My fairest angel! I cannot bear to see you in such distress and to sense--nay, to know--that you suspect me of causing it!

Let us consider the very nature of love--its purest essence, as given voice in its most glorified expression. Is it not, in fact, akin to a prayer? For that is how my hours are spent in sweet torment, my love: praying. Praying fervently, desperately, unceasingly for you to change.

What folly it is to equate Purest Love with unconditional adoration, my sweet! When a mere child, even a brute animal--when even an untrained puppy is capable of such crude emotion as mere acceptance--how then can it be of any value? It cannot be, my love; it cannot. I will not offer you such meager, worm-ridden fruit when my love drives me upward, to the highest boughs, in search of that exquisite reward: The most perfect You that can be envisioned by man or by God, on earth or in heaven.

Heed me, dearest!--I note your faults only that you may work to eliminate them. I note your failures only that you may surpass them in victory. I note ever and always your deficiencies, that you may make up such shortcomings with the aid of the bounty of my love for you.

You weep bitter tears when I say that you are grown fat, though it is but my love's dream to see you slender. You rail at me when I say that you must talk less and listen more, though it is but my love's dream to find you demure. You despair when I say that your hair has lost its luster, though it is but my love's dream to see it shine as of old.

Do not be foolish and fickle, my love--though I fear that also is a shortcoming you too often exhibit (please work on that). Do not be swayed by the flatterers and the sycophants, nor by the deceivers who claim that their highest expression of love for you can be found at last in that ultimate sacrifice which is Death. Oh, how I shake with rage at their chicanery! For what good can a man be to you dead, my darling? Of what use, to what end?

Who would tell you when you err, who would guide you out of folly, who would correct you--who would, eventually and after much labor, perfect you, were I to lay down my life? Can it fairly be said that there is anyone so enamored of you as to suffer your weaknesses and foibles hour upon hour, day upon day, night upon night?

Nay, these scoundrels would have you believe that their unsophisticated, cowardly (yes, cowardly! For it is a coward who fears to speak the truth, even when it is unkind), dog-like acceptance of who you are now, versus who you can become under my (I fancy) skillful tutelage--these shallow fools would convince you that their crude embrace of you in your present shabby state, clung to even at the moment their pitiful lives reach ignoble ends . . . is love.

That they claim theirs is a better love, a purer love, a more worthy love than my own infuriates me no end. Indeed often, too often, I am kept awake nights by it, though as you know. I do require my rest if I am to be most effective in curing you of your many wretched habits. Such is my life's work; know always that is my only dream, my highest endeavor. In fact, I wonder that you do not praise and admire my efforts oftener (please work on that).

I am weary now, after this evening which I have regrettably been forced to spend--again--repairing the defects in your reasoning, an activity which, though exceedingly tiresome for me, I nonetheless revel in performing, for only thus can I say with truthfulness and joy overflowing my heart:

I love you!

Yours ever,

__________________

P.S. In my haste to reassure you of my love, I had nearly forgotten to beseech you, please, to cease dressing in colors that do not suit your complexion. It is vexing to me that such beauty as you have should be clothed unflatteringly in colors that bring up the bile in those members of the public unfortunate enough to come upon you wearing them. Please work on that.

Posted by Ilyka at July 5, 2005 06:41 AM in i don't know you tell me | TrackBack