3 of 30.

Dearest You,

I start this letter with a bit of tightness in my chest. At first I thought it was a sign of something bad, but I’m starting to realize that it’s simply because there is so much I want to say. And it’s not that I’m worried about the amount of time I have to say all these things, or having enough space to type them; I’m worried that I may run out of words. I just don’t think the correct words have been invented for the things you make me feel. This tightness, I realized, is only a sign of how much you make me feel. It’s slightly overwhelming…but in the most beautiful way.

When I look at you I see someone so beautiful that it literally stops my thinking. But it isn’t that you’re built like a super model, or have the skin of the perfectly molded porcelain doll. It isn’t that your smile is straight and perfect and gleaming with light, or that your cheekbones rest high upon your smooth, immaculate face. Your beauty is so much more than that. You are so much more than that.

Looking at you has the power to stop people.

Your eyes command attention, not because they’re large or colorful or adorned with eyelashes that tickle your forehead. They command attention because they ask questions. They dart around with intense curiosity and look deeper than is comfortable for some to accept. But even more than questions and curiosity, they figure things out. They answer the questions they ask as silently and quickly as they blink.

Your mouth does more than talk, or laugh, or smile. It directs. It directs ears, eyes, and minds to it and then fills them with words, and sights and thoughts that no one else ever has. It speaks the most honest truth it knows, but does it with kindness. It says things it means, but on the off chance that it says something it doesn’t mean, it apologizes. And it’s always genuinely. Your mouth gives easier than it takes.

Your ears are hungry for life. They’re open and alert and ready, and the world around you doesn’t have enough to fill them. They funnel in the world around them and then sorts through it and tastes each and every morsel. They listen for the slightest changes, the oddest differences and for the serenity of the usual. They want it all, and don’t apologize for it. Your mind is their stomach, and their appetites are insatiable.

Your face…oh, your face. It isn’t ideal or exotic or anything like the magazines say it should be, but your face is unstoppable. Your eyes are directly connected to your emotions; your eyes simply the projector reel for what you’re feeling. When you’re happy, your eyes say it louder than your smile ever could. But your mouth radiates the same amount of emotion, it is just stealthier than your eyes; emotions are only whispers on a gusty night, and very few ever hear them. The wrinkles around your eyes and freckles and pink on your cheeks tell stories of your life, and do it with the same unapologetic grace that children live their lives by. Your face is more powerful, more generous and far more alive than any other part of you. And it eases people in the same instant that it excites them.

Your face is a treasure. It is illuminated by the beauty that lives and stirs and grows beneath its surface…and that is its true power. It is what lies beneath your skin that gives your face the ability to stop people in their tracks.

You stop me. You put me at ease. You excite every molecule of my being.

And for that, I thank you.

Always,
Me