Mon cher Y.,

Je t’aime et tu me manques. Sans tu, cependant, je ne me sens pas incomplet, mais seulement moins substantiel.

Mon amour, tu me remplis, comme l’air remplit un ballon.

Tu me chatouilles.

Tu m’étires.

Tu me soulèves.

Tu me façonnes.

Tu me fais plus.

Mon amour, s’il te plaît, ne me fais pas éclater !

Conduis-moi où tu veux. Tu me bouges comme de la musique. Mon cœur est léger avec toi.

Tout, toujours, — E.

My Dearest Y.,

How long before a novice becomes a master?  Must you begin at four?  Does it take four years, or six, or eight — 10,000 hours?  If you learn how to learn, does it take no time at all?  How long does it take to learn to love?

We met four years ago today.  That night, the world turned around me, but star-like I stayed fixed in that moment.  I discovered something for the first time, again; or maybe I found what I’d lost but never before had.

I met someone I had always known.  I saw my own reflection in a mirror, but someone else’s beautiful face looked back at me.  How can such urgently quixotic wild flowers share a root?

Before my first intimacy, I saw the world in small, ink-etched vignettes, and after, in palpable color and dimension.  Now, I no longer see the world I knew before I loved you.

I marvel in who you were, and are, and will be — like a butterfly — always you, always becoming.  Like white paint stirred into my soul, you’ve brightened the most essential part of me.

In meeting you, I feel guilty of a theft.  I have stolen you, like a book from a hotel, because I must know how this story ends.  Yet each gift of bundled words repays this debt and affirms my desire for you.

Meant and not meant — these words mean nothing; only what we want matters.  I want you.  Your absence defines me like an impression.  The only sense is love.  

I have put my heart and hopes in you these years, one by one, like coins in a toy bank.  Yet I hope one day people will say they gave everything they loved away.

All, always, — E.

My Dearest Y.,

I began speaking to someone again recently, someone I love, and we began talking about, of course, love, and the absence of love, and love’s many missteps and many, many other things, too.  We’d lost years but also not a single moment.

As I drove around later in the weekend, I began reflecting on some of the topics and details of our recent conversations, and quickly, a very clear thought began to form in my mind, like multiple clouds converging into one.

Most people, I thought, fall in love with another person as if they were a beautiful street in a foreign city — a sudden delight — a world unto itself, filled with every amusement, every pleasure, an answer for every desire. Its length, though finite, seems endless.

Only later do they learn that the street is connected to other streets, a village or town, a county or region — a whole, confounding country.  It changes how they see the street; it changes everything.  They don’t know where they stand anymore.

Immediately, I thought, people should fall in love with another person as if they were a country, instead: a country containing regions — cities and towns and villages — lit metropoli and vacant fields, both, everything imaginable.

This country, this beloved, they could endlessly discover, lose themselves in — find themselves in again — and never cease to unearth wonder in; yet all the while the source of this joy would remain their beloved.

I fell in love with you this way — I love you this way — I want to love you this way. Will you love me this way, too?

Tout, toujours, — E.

Ermine,

(Lemon County)

Calif.—

My Dearest Y.,

I have often thought of you as a tiny traveler, one who checked into my heart like a hotel room but became a permanent guest.

Likewise, the day we first met, immediately I felt so at home with you that I began unpacking myself like a suitcase.

I fixed and cleaned and polished everything for you.  Since it was all I had to give you, I wanted to make it as beautiful as I could.

If not for you, no one — not even me — would ever likely have known what I contained within me, what I kept inside.

Imagining you heard every word, I spoke to you, and the humble utterances bloomed — or maybe everything said in love becomes beautiful.

Harbored in me, you heard my whispers within yourself. Like fish, they swim within us, a single ocean with many names.

How often, too, I find myself dancing to some distant, secret melody, one I hear through a tiny window you leave open in your soul.

My footsteps have worn streets where none existed before, tracing your name, sieving the air for your inward and spiritual voice.

You have become my beloved, adopted country — a second home — whose beauty speaks to me like I’ve always known it, though I have not.

I desire most to wander you, preferring to lose myself in your flowering mysteries than to discover myself in them.

Any map of myself now requires you.  Like a pin, you mark my heart.

All, always, — E.

Ermine,
(Lemon County)
Calif.—

My Dearest Y.,

Things pop in my head, so I apologize if I mention one or two things which I already have. I do so only referentially.

My friend’s father died suddenly. I thought, how quickly our life circumstances can change, from ideal to dire.

It immediately reminded me of my experience with V. — though, of course, I would never consider comparing a death to a break-up.

I saw some similarity, however. Within a few weeks, I had broken up with someone I loved — dearly — only to commit to someone I didn’t.

I panicked, I ran, I chose safety.

I wondered, what about love seems so threatening, fearful, even terrifying? Do we fear being seen? known? rejected?

Do we fear we will repulse the one we care about most deeply? In the moment, I had a theory. I always have theories.

I thought love affects us that way because it makes us admit our self now includes another. Even when alone, someone abides with us.

This explains why when one of an elderly couple dies the other often closely follows. A large part of them died too.

I frequently — in spite of myself, really — watch a TV show where the living try to reconcile with the death of a loved one.

They say — every single one of them — “I think about them every day.” They still talk to them. They still feel their presence.

Death does not break love, but rather reveals it. Like a marionette bereft of the doll, you finally pay attention to the wires.

Death does this, so does loss and absence.

I don’t mean “absence makes the heart grow fonder” — I mean “absence reveals the heart.” Love, if real, requires no predicate.

We truly love when we love anyway. We must love something in its absence before — or even in order to — love it in its presence.

The Christian tradition asks us specifically to take this same leap of faith. I prefer to keep this missive secular, though.

(You know that most of the New Testament consists of letters, though, don’t you? Fun fact!)

I don’t doubt I’ve said some variation of this in some other place in some other way. I had something else to tell you, actually.

Exactly while I had all this in my head, I had a conversation with someone who said to me something I always say to myself.

She said, — you can only lie to others if you can first lie to yourself. I say, — if you can lie to yourself, you can lie to anyone.

As before, something popped into my head. When she said that, I thought, what truths do I — can I — tell myself, at this moment?

Several came to mind, and each one took my breath away. The feelings, I suppose, one might have seeing El Capitan, for example, a deep humility.

The truth serves no real purpose, I thought, but to please, awe, and also, like the monument, stand before us incontrovertibly.

I had one other thing to say but literally, as I typed this, I discovered my long-time priest, counselor, and friend has died.

I don’t know what to say, except that I will probably still pester her with questions! — if only in my head.

All. Always.

E.—

P.S. — I will always remember a story she told me during one of our many talks. Shortly after her first husband died, she said, she went for a drive. On the drive, she suddenly had the feeling that she should pull over. She pulled over and got out of the car, and as she did so, a flock of white birds — which shouldn’t have been there that time of year — leapt out of the reeds and flew away. She thought that he asked her to stop there then, that his spirit was with them.

Don’t hang out with “spiritual people” if you can’t handle these types of stories.

My Dearest Y,

It scares me when this happens — when I can’t find ideas.

I fear I’ve lost my ability to see, the best part of me.

I felt lost the other day.  I had no idea where to go.  I had no map, either.

I turned around in place, looking for something gracious, for somewhere to go.

I drive to think for a reason.  No one gets “unlost” standing still.

So that day I went for a drive and thought about my first chapter.

I thought about my heroine who, in the night, digs up that giant “i” from her backyard.

Before long, as always, my thoughts drifted to your lovely face, my island of peace.

I noticed what I always do, my guide, your birthmark, beneath your lashes, your Braille dot.

I wondered what one dot spells.

Finally I realized — she has a dotted eye!

How many times have I seen that alluring dot yet never seen “a dotted eye”…?

The thought made me ecstatic — I felt filled with warm sunshine.

I knew my heroine MUST have one too, so that the girl with the dotted eye digs up an “i.”

I wanted to tell you all of this so badly.

Do you think we share a language, you and I, that no one else understands?

I would write my book with water if I could, but I don’t know how.

If anyone could figure out how to, though, you could.

I also knew then why I can’t ever — nor could ever — fully express my feelings for you.

No word or words could ever pour out my watery heart — only a splashing exclamation point could.

I get lost, yet I never get found.

Everything finds me. Good things find me.

We have nothing to fear from a world so generous.

Yours, always,

E

Ermine,
(Lemon County)
Calif. —

My Irreplaceable Y.,

As I stood in front of my kitchen window last morning, a hummingbird fluttered before me — cruciformly — golden, garnet, and kaleidoscopic in the sunlight.

Hummingbirds rarely visit my kitchen window. I only keep cacti there, not flowers.

First she turned her head and looked at me from one eye, then she turned her head and looked at me from the other. She seemed to recognize me, and I seemed to recognize her, too.

Immediately, I had the feeling I should check my mail, and I found your long letter in the mailbox. I saved it to read right before I went to bed. I wanted it only — in my last waking moments — in my head and heart.

This may sound odd, but I saw your face in the letter — first serene yet intent, ethereal, then effulgent and unguarded, beguiling. Sweetheart, your face is my music — no words can express my love for you.

I knew the hummingbird then. She was you. Do you remember doing that, my love?

Forever yours, E. —

Pasadena

To Whom It May Concern:

I write to submit my application for the DISHWASHER position at Caltech.

I have several qualifications for this position which you should consider carefully.

First I should mention—though I believe my reputation precedes me—that I belong to one of the great dishwashing families of both South and North America.

My mother, Maria Clarissa Rustía Hernandez y Gomez, washed dishes for César Chávez, and when she wasn’t washing his dishes, she made me do it. This was fine as most often his dishes required little or no cleaning at all! My mother, as you must know, also penned the definitive treatise on dishwashing (Dishwashing: Master The Discipline) which remains required reading in every culinary school of note to this day.

My mother’s mother, Guadalupe Dolores Xochitl Gomez y de la Cerda, (though more commonly known as “Luz de la Porcelana”), washed dishes for Octavio Paz—though only briefly, on account of the constant sexual affronts and entendres which, if even remotely satisfying or intelligible, may have enticed her to stay in his employ—and later Gabriel García Márquez (though only during his residency in Mexico) who, as our family lore relates, left his expended dishes as variegated and meandering as the streets of Macondo itself, before the four-year deluge.

Her mother before her, Alma Lorena Valeria de la Cerda y Sanchez, whose latter life we have lost to poor domestic order and even poorer record-keeping, we know washed dishes for the invenerable José Doroteo Arango Arámbula, (more commonly known as Francisco “Pancho” Villa), though her work for him perhaps included more dish repair than actual dish washing.

(I should also specifically state that I conservatively estimate my own personal dishwashing experience to meet (and actually far surpass) 20,000 hours in circumstances whose challenges and rigor I shall only convey to you in person, as I presuppose an interview will shortly ensue.)

Secondarily yet no less significantly, as a Mexican, I have over thirty centuries of passion for dishwashing coursing through my veins, etched into my very DNA. Mexicans have washed dishes from the beginning of civilization and before dishes we washed the stones on which we prepared and served our cuisine of warriors—mostly likely with the blood of our enemies.

I claim, no culture values the dish more than the native people of the Americas. Lest we forget the immortal words carved into the hidden stones of the Great Kukulcan Temple of Chichén Itzá: “Behold the clean dish, sparkling like the sun, to which all glory flows—as it has always been, as it shall always be—and from which all glory flows.”

Finally, I must state the obvious: we can find no greater act of love in any human culture than a washed dish. A washed dish—pure, expansive, gleaming, sterile—says, as we all without explanation know—I recognize you, I honor you, I love you; I present this meal to you—whether humble or high—on this tiny altar of God; may it nourish your body, your heart, and your soul free from despoilment, and may you live all your days unimpugned.

To this great vocation I find myself called. I feel confident that you shall find no greater candidate for this position than myself. I would also find no greater pleasure than to serve your great institution in this capacity.

Very sincerely yours,

D.A. Hernandez

P.S. — Does the Armenian family in the kitchen still make that really good pizza? It still haunts me.

P.P.S. — If the dishwasher position is filled, I’ll consider other jobs.