Yan

I wrote this for Yan when I was in England, and I feel even stronger about it now, knowing that we are spending our lives together. I love you Yan!



I don’t know where to begin. How to say it...I just don’t have the same talent for words as you do. I look down to my keyboard. Frustrated. Lost. Nothing comes out. “Damn it” I speak aloud. I hear the vibrations of someone’s alarm next door, urging me that time is always watching. Never waiting. Always passing.

I remember the days we spent together. The times we laughed. Your constant jokes. Moments of intimacy and moments of passion. So infused that I can never tell which one is which. Which one is real. All I know is the great emotions I feel towards you. Always changing. Growing but not weaning. Evolving into a confused mass that I can’t seem to understand. If only I could grasp it and understand it. “Then you would understand” I find myself saying aloud.

But I was determined. I would write you something. Poetry seems lost to me in these academic days. It’s hard to write something when all you do is read and criticize. Read and criticize. Pull apart and reconstruct. How tender was life when I wrote those words to you? How easy? How close...

I picture your face and the words I would use to describe it. Masculine. Determined. Strong. But behind that face stands a man. A child. The person I love. Your weaknesses and fears all apparent as you confide in me day by day. Confidence. Loyalty. None of it sums up who you are.

I remember the words on your mirror. Words that brought me closer to you when I first walked into your space. The place you have defined as your own. I thought it so amazing that one could surreptitiously learn so much about another through their choices of living. And yet get everything wrong. Who was I to judge when my room seems to lack the true reflection of me? Then again, is there ever a true effigy?

I think about what all this means. It is hard not to look and yearn to the past for inspiration. Especially when it is history that has always inspired me. My past with you contains nothing but happiness. I know inside that there were other times. Pain. Sadness. Sorrow. Longing. But these times are all erased in the face of what you mean to me and what I feel for you.

And I grasp at it again. That thin explanation that seems to hover in my mind. Telling me what it is, but mockingly drawing away each inch I move towards it. Close. Far. Close. Far.

I know what I feel for you is strong. I know it is here. I reach out to you, looking for answers. But you aren’t here. You are at home. Where I should be... At your side... But the independent side of me tore me from you. And I cannot argue against what I am. You have never tried. Yet I still fight. Against reason and your better judgment. More of your virtues: Acceptance. Patience.

“Damn it”. I say again. The room gets darker. Time is chasing me now. Faster. Stronger. The more alive time feels, the more alive my fingers become. I do not understand it. I don’t try to. I just write and watch as the words come. No editing. No backspace. Space. Word. Space. Word. The end never in sight.

“I just can’t get it” I think aloud. Then I remember your encouragement. Your hand on the small of my back reassuring me forward. A very conservative, archaic motion, with modern insistence. You were always good at letting me find my own solutions. Leading the way. Teaching. Guiding.

It is like you are everything to me. All emotions. All descriptions. Picking some in no way defines who you are, and in picking all I lose your essence. Who you are will never truly be described by anyone. I doubt even you could describe who you are with distinct accuracy. I think back on lessons of long ago. Ice breakers in grade school. Ironic.

And like you, my feelings towards you will never be understood. Never written to perfection. I do not in any way believe I could convey it properly. But so many try. So many writings. Poems. Songs. Novels. I just can’t seem to grasp it enough. But did they grasp it either? I doubt it. No one would question love if love was understood. There would be nothing left to write.

All I know is I love you. You are the best and worst part of me. You inspire my life and destroy it as ‘my’ becomes ‘our’. Love. Affection. Longing. All of these are as much a part of me as you. As those of the past who tried to define love. Of those who have come and gone. All the while searching for meaning.

I look to the end of the page on the computer screen. And I know there is only one appropriate way to end this. My story is you.