Seventh Letter

VII.

Thursday, it rained

Dearest Winter,

You have stopped today. You were walking past and you stopped and looked at me to say, you look like you're thinking very hard about something. And I said, just the weather. And you looked at me for a moment longer than necessary (not that I didn't like it). Like you were reading something in my face that I had not given you permission to read, and then you smiled, slow, almost private, and walked away.

God, if only you knew what that smile did to me, it stirred me up in the insides, your eyes, I have always loved your eyes. I want to describe it precisely and at length. I will not, because some things should be kept, because some fires you do not describe but only tend, carefully, in private, where no one can see how large they've gotten.

But it was large. It is large. Everything about you is large, inside me, in the place I keep you, enormous and burning and utterly still, how it only kept on increasing largely each time.

I am running out of room.

eleven times, and the fire is still going