What comforts you?

I'd like to know. Mine are:

1. Walking
2. Tea
3. Listening to melancholy things
4. Bread and chocolate
5. Reading on my own
6. Being in your arms.

6. hasn't happened. <0 .5="" a="" after="" an="" at="" backache.="" been="" being="" br="" but="" could="" day="" different="" effort="" film="" hard="" have="" here.="" i="" if="" it="" italian="" much="" people="" probability="" that="" tonight="" too="" was="" watched="" were="" with="" work="" would.="" would="" you="">

I don't think you drink tea. You like meat. You like chicken, especially. You like thinking, but you don't always get caught up in films. You get cold, despite your uniform, those trousers, your hat, the layers.

I'd keep you warm.

Today
I saw a woman
With long thin legs in sensible trousers
And a misshapen woollen hat
Walking a tiny dog.
On meeting a friend, its lead
Was bound about those legs and
She stood, skewed yet straight,
As you do
With your silken hair
Hanging like a flag
Something in the weft,
Approaching
Your hat
She laughed
And I turned back whilst lengthening my stride
Thrice
To glimpse this changeling you
In vesperal light
On Parisian streets. 

Apparently, couples who spend years together begin to look alike.

I wouldn't mind that. With you. We're both white females, the same age, with freckles, and fairly tall, but you are delicate in parts; wrists, ankles. You've got a long, refined nose, and high cheekbones. Huge eyes. Tapered hands, long, elegant limbs. Not that it makes any difference, because you just want to hop and skip all over the place when we're together. You're quiet and shy, or you act the fool, and don't really seem to think about the grace you exude. Or strength, maybe it's a strength. Unknown grace. Amazing. You've got a chest, too. I am the inverse; my nose is short where yours is long, my limbs are stocky and most often used to open jars. I am broad, almost masculine, with no remarkable breasts, though there have been those that have remarked that I am graceful. Nobody guesses that I am masculine, as a result of my predilection for skirts. Though I occasionally look at pictures of myself and wonder whether a drag queen wouldn't have done a more convincing job. I don't mind my appearance, particularly. I don't like ageing, but I can get used to it. I'm gradually coming to terms with my build.

In any case, darling, it would be a privilege to grow to look like you. Though I prefer looking at you.

Do you laugh whilst looking shy with everyone that much, or is it just me? I'm going to torture myself with this question a while longer. Ugh.

I got a message from you today...

And I'm waiting to read it until tomorrow. Savouring. Though I shouldn't.

I should open it, reply, get it out of my system. I should tell you that I am gay, and see how you react. Depending on that, maybe I would hold your hand. In the future. At some point.

Everything is boring without you. You probably don't feel the same, because you are a genius who makes proper friends instead of temporary ones. I want to see your photos of me, because you took them. Or commissioned them.

Ugh. Hop over the pond, darling. Sleep on my floor. Chat until we fall asleep, then, in the middle of the night,  come and curl up next to me in my bed. I'll put my arms around you and kiss you and we'll sleep soundly.

I think you're my height, but you're actually smaller. I think you'd feel small, firm and soft in my arms. I'd like to curl up with you and kiss your shoulders.

Speaking of you...

I spoke about you to K today. She thinks I'm mad. 'Do you know what Christians think about people like you?', was her essential argument. Sadly, she's probably right. I felt vaguely angry with her for suggesting it. You might be fine with my loving women. You might accept. You might accept me in your arms.

If you wanted to, but were scared, I know what I'd say. I'd say that I didn't know whether God exists or not, but that if it does, then it must have better things to do than administrate relationships based on sexual organs. Babies are dying in the Sudan, it can't be more important that two people adore each other and want to be together but have the wrong genitalia. You might say that this could be a test. I would ask what the test was. To leave me, and be with someone you didn't love because they had the right parts, and make two people live a loveless life, or to tell everyone something really difficult and be happy with someone who adores you. God made all things bright and beautiful, apparently. Why should they be hidden away? I'd say, lastly, that when I am with you I feel vulnerable. I feel like I want to tell you the beautiful truth, all the time, even when it's not beautiful. I am truthful, generally, but I want to be more so with you. I want you to know everything I'm thinking. I want to be strong because of you, I want to protect you, from what I don't know, I want to hold you and I want to be vulnerable with you. I want to be kinder to people. I want to be brave. All because of you. How could that be bad, darling? How could any of that be a sin?

In any case, it's hopeless. You're across the channel, a believer and most probably in love with that accountant, who knows about maths and languages. Something in me hardens when I get told that it's impossible to have you, though I am slowly accepting it. I just want you so badly at the moment. You make me choke with laughter and you're shy and sharp and your gaze makes me stall. I want to look at the pictures of you and me. I want...

How could I have forgotten?

I saw you last weekend. We've only met twice, ever, and yet I feel as though I want to move back to my homeland just to be with you. I don't know whether or not you feel the same way. Probably not. You are Christian, and you purport to be heterosexual on the network that you never use to contact me, or rarely. I'd like to contact you on it all the time. I'd like to be around you constantly, when I wake up, when I fall asleep, and to find out whether or not you would irk me incessantly after a few months or weeks.

It's hopeless. I want to stay here or go to Belgium or Germany or Russia, and you're happy in our homeland. How would you cope with my atheism, and what sort of weft would homosexuality and Christianity create? Your life and mine, plashed together. It feels like fate.

I cannot forget how beautiful your face is, how your pale blue eyes gaze out of their hollows, careful and perspicacious, at everything. The upturned D your mouth forms at rest. Your cheekbones, and your narrow, aquiline nose. Your bushy eyebrows. Your dark hair, falling in thick strands, held back by long hairgrips. You look perfect, in your hat that's too small for your head and those trousers you always wear. Diligent hands. How you laugh. It's odd, your laugh- almost wheezing, and then you laugh a bit more after you've stopped, appreciating the joke. You make me laugh too, so much so that I choke on my salad.

Your friend was there, and I wished, almost, that he wasn't. Another heathen like me. He was kind and I liked him, but I like you more. I could have spoken to you all day, let you kill me with laughter, skip along the canal, take photos of windmills that you like and hunt chocolate. I didn't want to get my train back. I wanted to go and sit in a darkened cinema with you, brush your arm, whisper in your ear.

You said that you felt as though you could open up to me, more than with G, despite having known her far longer. I feel the same way. I feel as though I could never lie to you, even though I'm in awe of you. 'Why can't we live like horses', you ask. I make fun of you, but I know the answer. I wouldn't want to live without music, to live without knowing what it is to feel like this for you. A horse, though free of pain, can't feel any of that. If I had hooves, I'd never be able to touch you gently as I want to. I might never be able to anyway, but at least there's a slight chance. However slight.

So I begin to imagine. I imagine that you'd suddenly want to move to Belgium, that we'd find a flat, do all of those things; watching films, cooking, going on walks and bike rides, eventually waking up in each others' arms and arguing about all things great and small. I imagine the ideal. It could happen in the Green and Pleasant Land too, I suppose, or among dark satanic mills. I imagine you telling me why we can't. I imagine me telling you that this feeling, to adore and protect you, to be with you, to be honest and good, that you rouse in me could never be bad.

I imagine stroking your hair when the lights go out and whispering how beautiful you are. I imagine kissing you gently. I want to be gentle, though you are strong, because of the way your eyes look shy sometimes. Because your strength makes me want to be strong for you, and gentle to you, because you deserve it.

I didn't give you a hug on parting. I did when I saw you. I wanted nothing more than to do it, but your friend was there, and I didn't want to hug him, but I didn't want to exclude him either. Maybe he's yours? Maybe you love him?

How can I feel this way when we haven't seen each other more than twice? Coup de foudre.

Hello, my love.

I can't stop thinking about you lately. It could be because I need someone desperately, or because you're soft, intelligent, strong and kind. Lady of the house, of yours now, alone, which you regard as a privilege. 

Darling. Did you know that despite your strength, I want to wrap you up in my arms and protect you? You don't need protecting because you are strong. You go out into the world to fight your battles, to live well, and expect that everyone wants the best for all mankind, as you do. They don't. It must be sad, sometimes. I want to be there when you're sad, if you want me to be, to wrap my arms around you, to give you a soft place in the world and to tell you that you're beautiful and kind, and so gentle that it makes me ache to touch you. You're not gentle when campaigning, but your voice is strong and cadent. I have listened to you over waves, oceanic and digital, just to hear you speak about drones, though you never drone. You mean what you say. You speak with certainty. Your voice is as smooth and creaking as planed wood, the floorboards in my house that I know every inch of the way. Though I don't know you so intimately. I want to. I want to relax into your voice. I want to be in your arms, close to your chest, so that I can hear it from the inside as I drift off to sleep. I want to hear you all the time, my love.

You were a life model, and I remarked that it was brave. You said that everyone had said that, and that that must not bode well for your body. Au contraire, my darling. Your body is perfect. It is small and soft, and when I imagine you and I, I don't imagine a hard, photorealistic versimilitude of a corpus. I imagine you. I imagine a body that has given life to two children, a body that has worked, a body that still works, and that is  lovely. I imagine a body that is yours, a body that ages and progresses, whose cells are still reproducing, whose owner is intelligent, and soft, and kind. In short, you. Anyone drawing you would be privileged to do so. That, my love, is a privilege. 

You are beautiful.