To ---------------,

When you whispered into my ear this morning at the idle hour of half past three, I shivered and smiled because I knew I loved you. Now at 12.08pm, with you not here, there seems to be nothing else I could conceive of doing other than write you this letter, which I do so as a way of saying things that perhaps I have not yet voiced, though I think them as often as the sea has waves. I write this despite the work I ‘must’ do, that’s ‘important.’ Yet that word seems redundant to me now, arcane almost.
I can feel it hovering and fluttering its dusty wings above my head, flapping them together, Do what’s important, do what’s important it admonishes me. And I laugh at it, knowing that I am.

Important. Am I to import a meaning from elsewhere?
Important. The things I thought were, no longer are.

To wake, dress, clothe yourself, eat, drink, swallow vitamins, drive to work, stay at home, speak to friends on the telephone or perhaps see them over lunch at your favourite restaurant? Write an article for your boss, or a magazine that you admire? Send off your CV to a company you respect? Have a coffee, send some letters, faxes, emails? Go skiing, read a book, travel on the tube, phone the AA when your car breaks down, cancel your cards when your handbag is stolen? Meet a man for a drink and then go home and have sex on your kitchen counter, with the front door open? Feed your dogs and take them for a walk, pick your child up from school or speak to them wherever they are in the world? Help the elderly cross the street, smile at all you meet? Laugh at your father’s funeral, terrified someone might just understand. Drink champagne and dance till the sun says hello at a party of a person you hadn’t seen for five years? Snort some Charlie in the loos of a nightclub you’ve been to a million times before, only difference is their postcodes. Inject, smoke, rack up, pull down, pass out, go to sleep, do your sun salutations, meditate in silence for ten days, write a poem you will never send off to get published, wake in the middle of the night, and then fail to go back sleep, argue with your mother and then miss your father, whose image you’ve raised to the Gods? Backpack around South America, give up alcohol, swim naked in lakes with hippies playing the drums on the rocks in Guatemala, trip out on mushrooms in Battersea Park or have a conversation with a fish in the London Aquarium? Lie on Louis XV bed in Paris, dive under the ocean with sharks and a turtle or dance naked on a rock in the sea? Take photos of strippers, revise for your finals, call up your fathers brother you haven’t spoken to for six years to discuss your grandparents will, crave the praise of an uncle who is a father to a girl whose name is the place where you’ll be in four months? Loose your virginity to gorgeousness when your seventeen, only to refuse his number, knowing you’ll never call, revel in your erotic fantasy with a man who encapsulates all you desires on a beach in Aragum Bay, or get high on green ganja cake, with a motley crew of Parisians, Brazilians, Israelis and a Dutch man called Luke. Go swimming in the Serpentine in your underwear with a boyfriend you don’t quite trust? Reading Anais Nin and her lover Miller, Hesse and the Wilde wit of Oscar whilst listening to Rod Stewart in your Golf VW thinking of lychee martinis and dolls you collected when young? Being shy as a child, questioning as a teenager and strong as the person you are now? Reading books that inspire and sobbing in films you’ll forget that you saw, cheating in exams at a university you dislike, that next year you’ll pass? Kissing friends in Jacuzzi’s, having birthdays in aeroplanes when your mother was broke? Hating a brother that you always really loved? Laughing with a friend as you escape being raped on a gondola in Venice, (the most romantic city in the world). Travelling to places where Genocide has ravaged? Getting your chart done or your fortune read? Working in a restaurant, dancing with your plates? Breaking down and admitting your façade in front of 120 unknown faces or being a vegetarian who’s really a carnivore? Fasting for a week in Thailand, or raving in squats after school? Going for runs along the beach, or meeting your first crush there playing his guitar, blushing because your lip is stuck to your braces you hate? Making promises you broke and ones that you kept, having hamsters like lions, and dogs whom you miss? Popping spots and ingrown hairs and vowing you’ll stay off sugar for life, to think screw it and then devour a full ice-cream pot. Being fascinated by what is and what ifs, words and tantric sex and men like Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Dali and Pollock. Men of geniuses, wondering where all the women went? Standing in Trafalgar Square listening to Geldof and Mandela inspire thousands to take action? Missing meetings in Holocaust centres, being excited about premiers on Monday or having lunch with your grandmother, talking of imaginary lovers and war heroes long ago dead?

What’s important? All of it.
Because, they brought me to you.

Love ---------------- .