meet me under the cherry blossoms

Illustrated by Ella Clayton.

My love, 

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom. I took a bike into the mountains and saw them last Sunday. There were three- I’ll enclose a photograph- along a riverbed, all in a row, weeping pink petals into the water. It was beautiful, and sad. I thought of you at once and had a drink for you beneath them.

There were petals in my bag when I got home, and I felt almost as if I had stolen them. As if I had stolen the very heart of spring.

I cannot think of spring without thinking of you. It was spring when our story began. I believe this to be true, what happened before that spring was of little consequence, and I profess that some small part of me delights in how poetic it sounds for us to begin, as all things tend to do, in the springtime. 

Spring. Somehow I have removed all meaning from the word! The first page of an empty novel. Tilled and earthy soil ready for seed. A beginning. New life- isn’t that what all our primary school hymns taught us spring was?

Spring is ours. I have claimed it for us.  

Will you wear a crown of tulips and daisies for me? I want to see you in the sunshine. I want to see you on a warm spring evening. I want to show you the cherry blossoms. 

My love, 

There is a cafe here that you would adore. I discovered it in a mad escape from the downpour yesterday. A summer shower led me to you, even in this city. 

Do you remember when we ran to that bar in the rain? You drank whiskey and coke through a green straw. We shared chips and kissed the salt from our lips. Do you remember? That was my happiest June.

There was another day, that summer, when we found an art gallery in a city we thought we had stripped bare. You spent hours laughing at serious portraits and abstract pieces made of random lines infused with secondary meaning. I spent hours falling in love with your smile. 

I couldn’t describe a single painting from that day, but I could write pages and pages about the way your eyes would alight on something amusing. About the way that they would slide to me to share a comment or a laugh. I would always be in awe that I was the one you shared those with. I got to receive your wit, and your smiles. 

Smile for me again, would you? Laugh for me, at me! I yearn to hear it. I would play the clown to hear it, a hundred-thousand times. Will you let me? Will you let me show you the cherry blossoms? We can get a coffee after. Or a whiskey and coke. 

Your choice. 

My love, 

Today I saw snow for the first time. It was beautiful. And sad. 

I wanted all my firsts to be with you. I wanted to wrap a scarf around you, and hold your hand while we made art on a fresh white canvas for you to laugh at. I wanted to sit by the fire with you when we got home, until the snowflakes melted from your hair. I wanted to buy you a Christmas gift and kiss you on the new year. 

It’s lonely here in the winter. Come see me. 

It’s lonely here. Merry Christmas.  

My love, 

The cherry blossoms are in bloom again. I took a bike up to see them, same as last year. Maybe I’ll make a tradition of it. I drank for you beneath them. Perhaps too much, it was rather difficult cycling home! 

I was thinking about our first spring again. Our first chapter. Is it self-important of me to speak as though we’re some great romance? Perhaps I’ll take it up with Shakespeare in the afterlife, though I’m half-inclined to believe you’d cheer old Will on over me for the sheer absurdity of it. 

Anyway, I was reminiscing. For our first Valentine’s I bought you flowers, and rum. Somehow, to buy you one without the other would have been unthinkable. 

We drank the rum beneath the stars, and you wore the flowers in your hair. We tried to play cards but the wind kept blowing them away, so we shared a blanket and told stories instead. 

You need to come here next spring. When I do these things alone, I attract strange looks. 

My love, 

I wrote a song for you. Will you come so I can play it?

My love, 

I’m sorry my last letter was so short. Summer was difficult, the hot months stretch so endlessly here.

I hope to see snow again. Walking in it was somehow magical. It swallowed up all the sound, even in the city. Have you ever experienced that? Like a blanket had been thrown over the world. There were only my crunching footsteps. I imagined you following in them, placing your feet accurately in the indents left by my own. It wasn’t so lonely then, I could even half-feel a gloved hand in mine.

This year I’m going to bake a Christmas cake. My grandmother always used to make one, and even though currents are far from my favourite ingredient, the smell in the house always delighted me. Perhaps I’ll take some to the neighbours, there’s no way I can manage a whole cake on my own. Besides, all I really want is the smell and the marzipan. 

Do you remember eating my grandmother’s Christmas cake? You gave me all the icing. If you come this year, you can have the whole cake to yourself. I promise. 

My love, 

I write this letter by the light of the fireworks outside. The new year has begun! 

My Christmas cake was a success with the neighbours. So much so that they bought me a bottle of gin. I’ll toast it to you, now, though I can imagine you telling me to toast the new year instead. Calling me a love-sick idiot. But you’re smiling. And I’m smiling. Together. 

To you. 

My heart is overflowing. My glass is empty. There is music next-door and fireworks outside. I wonder if I would be dancing under an exploding sky if you were here. I’ve poured a glass for you. Will you come? It’s been so long since I’ve danced. 

It’s been so long since I’ve laughed at art or told stories beneath the stars. Will you come back? I want to live again. 

Smile for me. 

Happy New Year. 

My love, 

It’s spring. Guess where I am. 

I think this will be my final letter, I think I need to leave spring behind. My heart has been trapped here with you for some time, will you forgive me for freeing it? I want to feel it beat again. 

It turns out that even without you, the clock turns, and I’m left stranded in the cherry blossoms. 

Everything that I am is what you left behind. But I think perhaps this is wrong, that there should be more. Is it selfish to think so? I do not know what to believe, or what to be in your absence. There is no one who can tell me these things. Even your voice is a whisper in my head these days, my own thoughts drown you out. Sing for me, would you? Shout, berate and cry for me. I need to hear you. Tell me where to go and who to be, I’m waiting for you to call my name, I’m hanging on your every remembered word. I’m starving for more. For another smile, another kiss, another laugh, another glimpse.   

Were you with me at the cafe? Were you there when it snowed for the first time? Did you walk in my footsteps and hold my hand? It is too painful for me to do these things alone. It is too painful to think that I might never find another hand to hold. 

I love you. Smile for me. Come and listen to your song. Come and drink beneath the stars and eat Christmas cake and laugh. I’ll bring you flowers and rum. Come and see the cherry blossoms.

I love you.

I love you. 

Wait for me.