unmailed, unwritten letters

So this is my first letter that I will never send. I enjoyed the process, so I think I will write more of these.

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I like you. I like it when I am killing time between the early morning animal feeding and starting work and you show up with your big dog and open all the blinds in my room so the sunlight will come in.

I like it when we talk about things that are very complicated and when we play at pretending to be puppies or goats and then we do puzzles and stay quiet in the same space. When we're quiet, I try not to think in words. I like it when we brush the horses and talk to them more than we do to each other.

I like how you always try to scare me when I'm working by myself somewhere. I like how I get nervous when I'm coming to a place where I know you are. I like that actually being with you doesn't make me nervous.

I like it when we wrestle on the floor of my room, and when we kiss there, too.

I liked the day that we agreed that maybe it's important to be sweet to people to protect them from the real world, to offset all the terrible things out there, and I liked the way you kissed me after that and told me that was to make up for what was happening out in the world.

I probably won't ever say these things to you, because I'm too shy and anyway the way things have worked out between us makes me feel like you wouldn't really like it if I told you any of these things, let alone all of them in one single saccharine and ridiculous overture, the written equivalent of furiously batting my eyelashes at you. Which maybe in another universe there exists a Nicole who bats her eyelashes, but I can only do it in a self-deprecating way and I suppose that is also the way that I like you: in spite of myself and how terrifically insecure liking you makes me feel.

And so I write this letter to you, boy, not just as a letter but as a meditation on sweetness in general, on breathing it in and out and letting it flow through me and hoping I can make other people feel as good as they make me feel and not expecting a single other thing to come of it.

Hmmph.