From One Without Romance

“My soul is a passionate dancer; she dances to hidden music which only I can hear. . . . Whatever police the world may prescribe to rule the soul, I refuse to obey them.”

- Bettina Brentano

For my soul dancer:

I have fallen in love. This love may not be for you, but it was brought about by you, for it is you who inspired it. You, my muse of romance, you have caused my mindless attraction; for, I have been overwhelmed by the deep, sharp, shadow of what you signify.

My love is for you, my emblem, my motif. You do not know me, and my heart bursts with aching for I do not know you. I know only of you. I know of your desire for the objective and intellectual, your search for significance, and your longing for love.

Perhaps it is only coincidence that I share your vision. I have no great fondness for fate, either in theory or in practice. My inclination then is to communicate my thoughts so that you might know me more, and be inclined to return the sincere, if somewhat banal, gesture. In this way, we might not lose sight of one another too soon, and we might learn to know one another, both through pleasure and pain.

I have noted your inner calmness. You hold to pretenses of machismo and roughness, but you carry yourself with a natural grace that few have mastered, yet so many attempt to attain. You have shown yourself willing to be open, but seem to have difficulty expressing that openness, reverting to a baser demeanor and avoiding the conflict of inner and outer attitude altogether. I empathize with your predicament, for I too feel the opposing pull of social expectation and intellectual desire, like the twin forces of heart and mind.

I understand that this letter may change nothing, but at the very least I feel a great burden lifted from my shoulders, for at least now I may be honest. I do not know you, not in any real sense, yet I love you. Perhaps not in a romantic way, but in the way of the soul, that eternal being that prods us ever forward. My soul seeks the companionship of similar souls, but how can I know they are similar if they are veiled behind guise and guile? I ask not for your hand, or your heart, or your mind, or even your soul. I ask only that you grant me the opportunity to discover these things through my own effort.

I know you may fear a wound that cuts deeper than most if you allow me, as a surgeon, to peer into the vast inner workings of your very self; however, how can healing take place if you refuse the doctor access? True, the body heals itself with time. Likewise, the heart and mind, with the passage of time, may mend themselves. But the soul, oh the soul, that song sung to heaven with every breath we take, that cannot help but gravitate towards the light.

I fear not a wound, only infection. I fear not love, only life without. I fear not rejection, only the death of my avatar, of that which I love.