A Love Letter That Is Not A Love Letter
My darling,
It was never about the apples.
We sat together, sharing dinner. The candles half melted. Outside the world was dark and snow pelted the windows. No power, just us, wrapped in blankets, sitting in the living room, the fireplace flickering. We ripped stale bread with our bare hands and tried to chew it like the wild animals we thought we still were.
You poured us both another glass of wine and I’d lost count of how many that would make, but the empty bottles on the coffee table, the spilled chutney, the softening cheese before us reminded me that we had been there for an eternity.
And you were talking about apples.
Maybe because we’d sliced the last one in the fridge and it had stood, naked and glistening in front of us, ignored, and it had begun to brown.
I was that naked apple. Sitting there, unnoticed and wanting.
You talked about varieties or some such nonsense. You talked about the apple tree your neighbor had and your overwhelming desire to steal one of those apples and eat it secretly, and I have never in my life so much wanted to be an apple. You said the word a hundred times and each time you said it, I shivered, imagining your mouth on the letters, the kiss of the Ps, your tongue against your teeth. You licked that word, rolled it in your mouth. I imagined my breasts as that word, how your tongue would roll over me, pluck at my nipples, tease with tongue to teeth. Your teeth just grazing me as I arched my back.
In the gold flickering of candlelight and firelight and my inner light, I watched you sip your wine, the last of it. You were so animated, so alive. You talked about the apples and orchards and lush green valleys and I thought, what about my valley, you idiot, what about my lush hills in front of you, this mound of ripe fruit just waiting for you to make a move, to push aside the stale bread and soft cheese and the thinly sliced apples, and to rip off the warm blankets, the sweater, the long johns, and leave me in front of you cold and naked and shivering, the hairs on my body raised, my nipples just waiting for you to taste.
And then the moment passed. The fire cracked and hissed. You took your last swig of wine and sat back on the couch and then there was a flicker, and the power came back on, and all the magic we’d been cocooned in was lost, and I was still wrapped in a hundred layers of material to keep me warm when really, all I’d needed was your body against me to keep me aglow.
The moment was gone. You lost so much connection and love by staying in your mind, and I lost so much by waiting for you to see me. If only one of us had been brave enough and strong enough to stop the conversation and just for once focus on what we could give to each other, on the pleasure to be had in sharing a simple fruit, maybe things would’ve turned out differently.
So no, my darling. It wasn’t about the fucking apples. It was about the fucking, and how much I missed your body wanting mine, and how, still, even now, I sometimes think of your lips and tongue, and the pleasure they could have given me if you would only have treated me as precious and glorious as one of your many, many words.
XXOO
Tanya
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ABOUT TANYA EBY
This is not, of course, a real love letter. It is not a real letter at all. I’m just playing here, with poetry and heat and humor. I actually loves writing letters, though I rarely do it. There is something so exciting about receiving something in the mail that someone wrote just for you. So, sometimes, I write love letters to imaginary people. Some day, I’ll have someone to send them to. Maybe not this one though. If I was in this situation with a storm, a blackout, charcuterie, and someone sexy with me drinking wine, I don’t think there’d ever be time to utter the word APPLE, let alone talk about varieties. Fingers crossed.
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Tanya is a writer, narrator, audiobook mentor, dreamer, mom, and lover of snow storms and wine. If you like this blog, please share it with a friend. Or better yet, print it out and send it to them.