letter found on a train headed into New York

I found the following letter on a train:

I could say that I don’t understand the vitriol you sent in my direction during our last correspondence, but that would be a lie. I understand only too well.

When faced with someone who might need something from you, you run.

We both know I wanted you to be end up being my wife, to be together for as long as we both have left, and to accuse me of just wanting to fuck you is as ludicrous as your claims that politics should keep people who care for each other apart.

Politics are a game to distract until such a time that you’re back with the person you hold most dear, in the world you’ve created for yourselves.  Just as fucking is what you do until you learn how to make love.

Rilke said “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

A test you are terrified to take.

So I understand the anger and the harsh words. I do.

But they sting nonetheless.

I guess it’s finally time, after all these wild and tumultuous years, to say “I have to be leaving, but I won’t let that come between us, okay?” and mean it.

The paper it was written on was balled up in a corner on the floor and I’m left wondering if it was him that threw it away undelivered or if it was hurled back at him. It was grimy and there was no way of knowing how long it might have been rolling around the train. No way of knowing what happened to the heartsick author or the girl he wrote it for.

She must really be something.

I guess I can only hope that it worked out for them both.