When you buy a postcard for someone you love, think carefully and slowly. Should you send a scenic postcard, a picture of your local countryside, mountains in the background and woolly sheep in the fore? Would it speak your mind or hide whats in your heart?
Or maybe, keep your loved one guessing. Send a map, and pretend that what you two have really is that simple.
Fold once, fold twice, and I'm right next to you in your arms.
Or, be less abstract and get personal. That picture we took last Christmas under the lights. The blue, red, and white flickering over your skin and onto mine. I'll print it out and write on the back; I. Miss. You.
And the date of course, a congratulatory stamp of how far we've made it since the day we met.
A date to show how far we've still yet to go.
:::
When I buy you a postcard, I think carefully and slowly. What do I write? What can I write? Words are just words and they'll never bring you closer to me. As your inbox fills up with my love, mine is empty with memories of what used to be. Instead of counting down the days left to see you, I'm counting up from the day you left. As the number hits the dreaded 365, the halfway mark of what should be our long distance love anniversary is instead a year of words spoken but never heard.
As I watch your life move on from mine, no longer pictures of you and I but you and someone else, I close my eyes and write you. Cards to you from last Christmas, last Valentines, last Summer. Let's go through the worn photos, their familiar smiles-
repeat.
:::
I write of the past- the reality and my expectations blurring together into one sepia mess. I'm comforted in the postcards, and I write you still. I'm letting you know all the love I feel for you, and how you'd never realise how much love you're losing.
Is there a word for the moment you find out you've been replaced? Replaced by more physical and present things than a postage stamp kissed with love from the bottom of the world.
Is there a way I can describe this gut-wrenching torment, as I wake up disappointed in the blue sky?
:::
Still, as you walk away further and further from me, I write to you. I send letters into space and time, hoping that one day, someone will find your new address and forward these postcards to you.
They'd write a little memo on the stack of handmade photos from places we've been, and places we could have been. Stick a pink post-it on the front, and scribble in felt; "She still thinks of you".
If only you knew.
It's only because I don't know how not to.
:::
