(above: My boyfriend has blue eyes and a fading appearance by Zoe Catherine Kendall, Sept 2010)

A private letter to my universal ex boyfriend and a shared public experience.

"Dear ex lover,

I hope this message finds you well and rested and that you are not too perturbed by attempts of mine to communication with you. Its not that I want to revisit old territories, islands irrevocably lost to the sea or try to recapture those meteors of love that we sent spinning into space all those years ago. It is true that those pieces of land have been surrendered forever to skies beyond our mortal reach and that they will remain suspended for all time above and beyond our feeble grasp. It is true also that the unspoken keys to the great citadel we once reigned have been swallowed up by the earth, molded back into the ground as humble stones. I have wanted to tell you for some time now about how I swallowed some of those stones that our love had reclaimed, and that they are in me still as ground beneath your unknowing feet. You, old lover, once reigned my heart, spinning me into a vulnerable golden grain for a feast you could yield and eat, and having devoured me, conquer, question and retreat. And from that point onwards I was lost to you completely, washed up on an isolated beach. And now we have been separated for quite some time, living lives as distant dreams, knowing only of our past mistakes, licking our wounds in the wilds of our hearts weakly, wondering frequently whether what we lost, we could regain, wandering carefully to the edge of our split, the spit of land that stretches out to a lonely bay where only we were washed up ungraciously. We, having lost cannot regain what we were then, you there and me without gain. Lover I think of you repeatedly, gesturing out in the storm of my sleep, clinging to your image as I lay in arms and with crudity conjuring our broken embrace. But these boys, old lover, cannot compare, their hearts unknown inspire no such care, their eyes unlit do not reflect my loving stare, bare of mind and passionless, with them I warm the bed we made, with them I play a foolish game. But from thoughts of you ex lover I must refrain, except to say in love we were a foot above and having fallen, have found ourselves now lame. To you ex lover, I offer this, my unnamed thoughts, my exiled kiss. To you I owe a world of pain, 'memories lost like tears in the rain*'. To you I sailed a solvent sea, my breath absorbed as a silent fee, and from you I wobbled, ran, sank and dived, airless, loveless, lost of pride. And here I am now, ex lover, with land of my own set back from the edge, a cliff I have climbed alone, a land to you now unknown. And here I will stay, safer in myself, and only wish that perhaps one day, you might sail that great sea of time and tear, aiming gallantly back at me."

Phew, that was pretty liberating! ;-) Who's next?!

* I borrowed that line from Bladerunner, one of my favourite quotes...

Discover more of my work on my blog www.self-series.blogspot.com