Buzzfeed, Boys, Black Magic

leela writes a love letter

I think the reason I fell in love with you is, for a moment there, I thought I saw the milky-way in your eyes.

Maybe it's an accident of my birth. The icicles on the waterspouts, the frost lacing the windows, the cold air in the delivery room, the snowflakes that melted on my cheeks as Mom carried me out of that hospital. If she ever did. You know I've always suspected I came from outer space.

You're a scientist. You might already know that if you travel out to any shaded patch of the cosmos, the temperature would hover around minus four-hundred- and fifty-five-degrees Fahrenheit. I very well might have been born to float around Orion's belt or Cassiopeia's throne, my pink hands stuffed in my parka. But, like a meteorite fallen from the night sky, I'm here.

And so are you.

It's a lonely little planet for a spaceman. I can take off my spacesuit but I can't peel away my alien skin. The best I can be is an imitation of a person like you. You see, you aren't like me, though I thought you might have been. You're the sun. You're heat. And though I'd love to warm up my toes, to do that, I'd have to fall into your orbit. I'd revolve completely around you. I can't help it, it's gravity. And that isn't what you want from me.

Spacemen like me don't belong with people like you. Spacemen don't even belong with each other. We're ice and snow and all the things that numb your fingers and chill your bones.

We wander through this world looking for stars in the eyes of strangers.

And for a moment there, your eyes -your beautiful, brown, starry eyes- looked like home.

***

I deleted the draft a few minutes after I wrote it. I fell asleep not long after that. Around 2AM on Friday, I woke up in a start. I dreamt Rafi visited my house in a starship that resembled his Honda Civic. The asphalt of my driveway turned to empty black space beneath us, and before he could park, swept him back into the night.

***