Letters to Milena

By Tippana Ruthwik Reddy

Dear Milena,

This unbearable immediacy of now, wishes to remain buried, in you, inhaling quiet truths of your existence - rising and falling, until my own evaporates into yours. Milena, to be near you is to confront warmth not as comfort, but an overwhelming truth, a hearth, so consuming. Yet, I would willingly risk being burned, just to feel it a moment longer.

To press my face into the fragile permanence of yours. Not to claim, but to surrender, to cease being Kafka, to become a nameless shadow absorbed into your light, until the cruel machinery of time forces me back into myself.

In that moment Milena, I would give up words, letters, the entire labyrinth of language, just to be silent against you. Your warmth Milena, is not the absence of cold - but its undoing, and I, lost as I am, will bury myself in you until I am unmade. For in your absence Milena, I am weightless, nothing but substance, until I see you and suddenly, my eyes can see, and its only you, only you they see.

By Tippana Ruthwik Reddy