Wanting to Know- From Catherine Three.

Fernando,

Many times I have sat down at this table with a blank sheet of paper in front of me and eagerly held a pen in my hand intending to write you. I've read and reread the letters you've sent, searched them for a reply, searched over and over between the words trying to gather some sense of you and myself. I've closed my eyes and listened intently to the disquiet that hums in this room, listened for the words I hoped would come. And for so long they did not. I sat as time slipped away and I tried again and again to summon my courage and wits, to make some adequate thing to send back to you that did not trivialize nor misstate my thoughts. I don't know if it was confusion, perhaps I was sunk under the torrent of things left unsaid when we last parted. Or if it was fear. Some vague fear that I am not who you think I am, that I am not what you need me to be. Also a fear that the brief time we shared was an accident, a misstep into a dream that could not possibly be sustained in my real life.

When you folded me in your arms I felt your weight and warmth press into me and it was as if I had been clutched from the intertia of my life and made to stand in the still brightness of yours. I desired nothing more than that momentous falling away from myself, and I felt no need for the past nor the future. I loved you instantly and deeply. I hope I do not frighten you by being so direct. But I am young, Fernando, much younger than you, and I'm not sure you are still able to love instantly, without contemplation. Or perhaps for you love alone is not sufficient. Maybe you were once satisfied by a single love. I knew in the darkness of your gaze and your careful words that you were letting me see exactly what you wanted me to see of you. We slept a happy sleep together, and I dreamed as I slept beside you that I lived in a bright, empty house on a hill overlooking a city and the ocean. It was an ancient city littered with ruins, but it was full with all the motions of life. Through a wide window I looked down on the city, and it was far from me. The noise of life that always intrudes and distracts was nothing but a far away churning and hissing, like the lapping of the low tide on the beach, gently rolling. And I woke next to you and I was not sure if I had woken from the dream. I wasn't sure until you had gone.

When you say you want to come running to me I cannot help but wonder if you are running towards an image you have conjured, that you are running from your past and your loneliness that you understand less than you think you do. I am not saying this to be cruel, I am only searching you out. And I do not neglect your words. I hold them tightly and place them deep inside of me, next to my heart. They live there, you live there, and when I return to them, as I always do, I find them repeating in rhythm with the pulse of my blood, as real and as thick as my blood. But Fernando, we barely know each other. I know nothing of your life, nor your loves, nor your habits. I only know the warmth of your hand on my cheek, your lips and your eyes all aflame. I could see that there were worlds to know behind those eyes. I could hear, as I lay my head on your chest, your heart beating so heavy with some sorrow, many sorrows. I wondered what memories you kept there and I wondered what place I would take among them. I wondered why you had come to the ocean alone. But we hardly had time to ask each other "why". I knew that you saw a common sorrow in me, and I knew that there was some understanding there beyond words, in perfect silent stillness, as silent and still and illuminated as the night. Did I mistake that for love?

I do wish to write you and know you, but it frightens me when I am struck dumb and wordless by such an experience. I do not think it struck you blind, as it did me. You would not have left with so few words if it did.

And I don't know what you want from me.

Wanting to know,
Catherine