To Know A Stranger

He was a stranger when he first caught my eye. Our love is familiar, yet unique.

You have been me. Perhaps you fell in love with him as I did.

I hold no jealousy. I am glad we have this to share, Reader.

There are no words for what we are, yet words are the very foundation of what we are.

He made me things, such beautiful things, gifts that I shall hold dear all my life, gifts I hope my children will one day love as well.

I have never met him.

I know what he is afraid of. I know what he thinks is right in the world, and what he thinks is wrong.

He is one of my first loves, but I am far from the first to love him.

He will never know my name.

I like to think he loved me too, distantly, as a concept. Maybe he didn’t anticipate me. Maybe he saw me as a certainty.

He is not the only one I love, as I am not the only one to love him. I have so very many loves, but I doubt he’d hold them against me. I’m sure he had his own.

I’ve never visited his grave, a century old and God-knows-where. Why should I mourn? He lives in my hands and on my shelf.

I don’t think he ever wanted flowers from me. I trust my love is enough.

But that isn’t on the pages he left for me.

When first I saw him, he was a name stamped in golden ink, on a stack of well-bound pages at the very end of the shelf at a bookstore I’d never been to, surrounded by others I could easily fall in love with.

I don’t know how he took his coffee in the mornings, or if, perhaps, he preferred tea.

I know only what he felt was valuable enough to carve out of ink and bind with thread, preserved for me a hundred years down the line.

He loved me so much he gave me a story.

Perhaps he loved the story so much he gave it to me.

He is a stranger, long dead.

Yet he is no stranger to those that have fallen in love with him,

No stranger to those that have taken the time to study his gift.

We know him well.