voor jou

And I’ll keep undressing of all of these layers, because when I’m bare, that’s the only image of myself I want you to see; and I am tired of writing, of scribbling, of typing and I would gladly shut off all instant communication just to face the same nakedness and embrace it, touch it, taste it, hold it, walk my hands through it, blend it inside and outside me, let it burn, or let it float, or let it go, because while not all passions are meant to live, their substance is meant to outlive.

So, dear long time pen pal who lives on a another continent, will you meet me halfway through? I want to meet you, and when it happens, will you spend the first 48 hours with me? Because I remember I know how to listen, and I know how to speak, and I know how to surrender, and I remember emotion is motion. And I want to kiss your face, and tie your arms with mine, and feel your measures and your weight, my own body as a scale. Spend the first 48 hours with me, because when I stop undressing, there will just be one last layer left, and I want to know you for who you really are, and the veil on my eyes will need to fall.

I once decided, midsummer, to live my life as if any day I could get hit by a bus. Because aging, I realized a few things. You can have a love affair that lasts forever, with your work, your art, the beauty of tulips in buckets or bugs raining in your watermelon plate in June. Usually, these are deep and undeniable liaisons but I could never compare them to the deepness of basic, comfortable silences between two people in the same room, the secrecy of inside jokes that are born and raised in a human relationship or with the shameless erotica that you can only get after sharing time, space and memories with a person. Aging, I realize under all these layers I haven’t changed at all since I was fifteen and that only the life has gotten weaker, wider and scarcer, like a stone beach.

Spend the first 48 hours with me. And maybe the next 48 years too.

Will you?

— Ioana Cristina Casapu