Mind Blind Saucy Side: The Note Inside Your Lunchbox (Grayson) (Patreon)

Dearest Love of My Life,

By now, you may not remember the offhand comment you made two weeks ago. We were watching that movie, which I can’t recall the name of but was set in Vienna. You mentioned how romantic you found it that the two main characters exchanged love letters.

I’m sorry this letter took so long for me to compose. There were multiple drafts that I scrapped, because how can I encapsulate all that you mean to me within a few paragraphs? I finally gave up because that’s impossible. A letter can only say the smallest fraction of everything that I feel towards you. Still, I hope this makes you smile on your lunchbreak.

Note scribbled in the margin: Please don’t read this around Nick. My prose got mildly enthusiastic towards the end.

Although I’m not a poet, I did check out a few books from the library. I quickly realized that I’d never be able to write a love letter like the letters in those books, because most of the examples were written between lovers that didn’t last. The love that poets talk about is like a dream, whereas loving you has made me feel more awake than I’ve ever been in my entire life. You’re real, not a fantasy, and I love you all the more because I know you inside and out. Even the parts that you’re ashamed of, the parts that you think are ugly, the parts that you’re scared to acknowledge . . . I love them all because they’re all a piece of you.

I didn’t anticipate that I’d ever know someone as truly and deeply as I know you, or that I’d be lucky enough to experience being known that same way in return. My grandmother always joked that she and my grandfather had been together for so long that she could read his mind. I have a head start on that aspect of our relationship, but I know that I’ll love you just as deeply when we’re both in our eighties as I do right this moment. I wonder if by then I’ll have solved you completely. Because even though you share your thoughts with me, I find myself caught off guard daily by the beauty of your mind and soul.

I love you.

I love the way you sigh as you settle into my arms at night, and the way that you nuzzle your nose against my chest. I love that it doesn’t matter that you hog the comforter because you drape your whole body over me like a heated blanket (that is why I wear socks to bed, though, my love). I love those disgruntled koala noises you make when the alarm clock goes off in the morning, and I love how you bury your head beneath my chin as if you want me to protect you from the workday.

I especially love the mornings that we don’t go to work, when the comforter gets shoved to the floor because you’re on top of me instead of the blanket. I love the feel of you and the way we fit together so perfectly. I love that I hear your pleasure even when you bite your lips to keep yourself from crying out, and I love that I hear how much you love me as you drift off back asleep within my arms.

We’re each other’s refuge. The insecurities you sometimes feel when you’re naked in front of me . . . I know it’s unfair, but I’m also grateful every single time that you let me overhear those thoughts. Because there’s nothing that I want more in life than to continue to reassure you that all those self-doubts of yours are tosh, because you are so much more amazing than you give yourself credit for. You make me smile more than anyone else in the world, and you taught me that it’s okay to be vulnerable even though I was raised to believe that vulnerability was the same thing as weakness. It’s not. I am who I am because I met you.

You have my heart. You have my everything.

Yours,

Gray