tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

I found these lines today on a poem by Pablo Neruda, from his famous series of Love Sonnets, as I was rooting around in my old files. For me, “files” is stuff stored online which means stuff that I don’t have to write out by hand. Ever since my third (or fourth?) grade teacher’s disapproval of my atrocious penmanship, my writing by hand has slid downhill.

Wherever it was that Charla learned her own penmanship, I should have gone there too. It is a combination of the determined tenacity of all of the women in my family mixed with a creative and whimsical feel. Even though I see these letters every day, today I saw them on an old email she wrote to me for my birthday three years ago.

It was a letter combined with photos of pages from her journal that she wrote in the days and weeks since we had met. These are all such good records to keep, if only to show just how far we have come and where we were previously, and also it is a hint of what is yet to come. Even after what has been a trying period for us over the last year or more, I like it when our words resonate louder than ever. She wrote:

There are so many reason why I love you. But I gotta say that at the end of the day when our words are done and we’ve shared our kisses, I can close my eyes with my head on your chest and fall into a slumber that has more comfort than I have ever felt. We can have our arms wrapped around one another, face to face, only breaths apart, and feel total and complete peace and comfort in one anothers arms. I’ve never known anything like it and I cherish it.

Pablo Neruda’s Sonnet 17 ends this way:

…so close that your hand on my chest is mine
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep