#thelostletters

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Hey.  You. I feel like I owe you one of these.  Like I owe us one of these, some documentation beyond 1AM photo strips.  Not to say those aren’t a champion version of their own class.  Someday those will be worth more than anything else.  They’ll be relics.  They’ll be what some 16-year-old girl finds in an antique store pressed between pages of a book.  And she’ll stare, and stare, and think to herself, “They look so happy...” and it will ache in her chest a little because she hasn’t found that yet. That’s where I was before you.  That ache in your chest for someone you aren’t certain exists.  When that person (or your daydreamed interpretation thereof) crosses your mind all you can do is hold your breath and pray.  That’s all I ever did.   I used to write you notes.  Not you, the you I know and love and hold every morning and every night.  The you I believed had to be flesh and bones, somewhere out in the wide world.  Notes like, “Today, I walked into the courtyard of my building and found myself in a whirlwind of pale pink petals off of one of the trees.  I miss you.”  Another, “I’m here, in a crushed powder blue chair, under a big paper lantern, on Capitol Hill, in a building older than my grandparents.  Where are you?” I have them all.  I have pressed flowers from summers spent counting days until we crashed into each other too.  Lilacs mostly. Because I knew it.  I knew you had to be there.  Somewhere.  And the only reason we hadn’t fallen yet was we had some falling down to do on our own first. I look back at all of those nights over the last ten years or so, all those moments when I’d hold my breath, “Please, please, please...” In San Francisco. In New York City. In Denver. In all the spaces between. I tucked notes under bricks for you to find.  Mostly on Platte Street.  That would have been right before you moved back. I read books, and feathered nests, and kept quiet, and listened to music, and went to shows, and walked about, and stared at everything and nothing, and penned pages upon pages.  I drove for miles and miles and miles to nowhere at all just to feel like I was moving forward.  It was important, I swear, I would not have this head if it weren’t for it, but if you asked me at any point therein, I would’ve have honestly and sincerely told you I was biding my time. All I wanted was those eyes of yours looking over at me, those hands laced up through mine.  Someone to laugh with at overheard conversations and stare at all of those rows of corn with the sun sinking past.  Someone to prop legs on while reading at coffee.  I have wanted this since before I was old enough to vote. All I wanted was windows open, and curtains billowing, threadbare quilts, books everywhere, and art in all of it, and gorgeous light all around, and family and friends as family, and records turning, and that feeling of being so immeasurably lucky that leads to your heart feeling sixteen sizes too big for your ribs. Here we are.  You and me.  We’ve found this thing.  This device of immeasurable luck and potential.  Of grace.  Rose-colored through & through.  You and I are county roads and park avenues. About a month before we started tangling I wrote, “If I could find a heart of gold and proper swagger all distilled into one gentleman I’d be done.”   And again, here we are. And these beautiful, bizarre, wonderful people around us we get to call our own. And even when we fight, and we’re being punks, and I want to go lock myself away & alone for a few hours, and you want to tell me I’m being an idiot and I want to tell you you’re being a child.  It doesn’t change everything else.  It means we’re figuring this giant, amazing thing out.  It means we’re fighters.  And I don’t ever want that to change.  Because if you aren’t willing to fight then you’re fucked. And I want this.  I want us.  I want to show you all of the places I deemed holy across this country and I want to see yours.  I want to be on airplanes with you.  I want to be in the middle of nowhere with you.  I want holidays and birthdays and benchmarks and toasts. Of at least equal importance, but possibly more, I want all of the heartbreaking with you too.  I want you next to me and I want to be next to you.  In all of that terrible drudge that is years ticking by which we need not mention.  Because you get it.  I get you.  You get me.  Sometimes we’re our absolute best when entirely silent.  Because we get it.  I have never, ever had that.  I’ve had people talk too much when they needed to shut up and I’ve had people clam up when they needed to say something.  And it certainly seems all of this living and loving inevitably catches up to us in crushing ways.  No matter what. I suppose what I’m saying is I love you.  But it has more gravity to it than three words can convey.  I’m grateful for that heart in your chest and that brain in your head. XXXXXXX XX XXXXXXX XXXX XX XX XXX XXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXXX XXXXXX.  X XXXXXXX XXXXX XXXXXXXX XX XXX. I’m sorry I didn’t handwrite this.  But you’re over there and I’m over here and proper letters can’t reach Brooklyn quickly enough for my purposes.  This is why the post office is failing modern society. I’ll copy this down in half-cursive sprawl for you someday so it can be laid down in a cigar box behind floorboards. Good night, XXXXXX XXX XXXXXXX. Yours, Amanda Lynne Lezan