Love Letter to Myself

Love letters don’t have to be happy.

And if I were to write one to you I know it would have to be sad

Just like it would be if I were writing to anyone else

So I would write to you as if you were someone other than myself

I would not write you a letter about how much I love you

I would write you a letter about my love.

I would write to you:

Dear whatever you would like to be called,

By name or by another thing that calls to you

I could call you stars

Because I do think you shine like them and you’re scattered like them

And you don’t shine half as bright as the other lights do but maybe that’s okay

Or I could call you tree

Because you seem to keep wanting to be or thinking you are

Being stepped on by rubber soles that will slip and fall and it’s all your fault

Or I could call you mine

A pickup line that would never really work unless you looked unlike you do

But in this case you are mine and I am yours we are each other and I could call you

Or I could call you nothing at all.

There’s so much I want to say to you and so little that I do.

Words are less than feelings, I think.

I don’t think I could describe everything I feel for you only in words

But I’ll try to paint a picture of you with your own fingertips:

You are in a tree,

And I know you say that a lot,

You are the tree or you are in the tree but I think it fits,

Because you feel safe in trees and you feel safe here in this letter

And you would sleep in a tree if you wouldn’t fall out

And you’d dream of falling up into the sky

In that beautiful blue that you love so much because it feels to you like a color that’s been lost

To the dull of the modern world but when you see the stars that have been for billions of years

You see the light again and you are happy.

I love how you can be happy.

How when you smile through your eye bags

I imagine I see little stars twinkling in the brown of your irises.

I love how you giggle when anything happens that you like

And I love how it sounds when you laugh.

I love that you laugh at everything even if it isn’t funny because to you it is

I love how you try to calm down when you’re excited but you never can

I love how your dimple on the left side of your face

Shows up when you smile

or when you frown

I love how you can be sad.

How when you cry through your eye bags

I imagine I see little stars shining in the tears in your eyes.

I love how you cry whenever you get upset

Because it shows you have real emotion, you are a sensitive person

I love that you cry at everything even if it isn’t upsetting because to you it is

I love how you listen to sad music and it only makes you sadder

I love how much you feel.

Love letters don’t have to be happy.

But I find that this one has strangely turned out to be.

Maybe I do love you, and so then you love me

Even though there’s a lot of things I still haven’t said

Like I hate how you hate yourself and your face, and your body

I hate how you look when you smile and I hate how you look when you cry

I hate how you’re not cool and everyone else is

But I know that you know about the things that I hate.

Because you hate them too.

Because you never stop and think about the things that you love about yourself,

Except for the occasional selfie that you delete the day after

Because what were you even gonna do with it anyway?

You’re just not all that, you think. But I think you are.

And I think you love yourself anyway.

You must love yourself because I know I love you.

I love you.

Love,

You