.

Its late, and I’m awake.

Allie,

Tonight i can’t sleep. Were you real? You looked like a woman, and you were the woman i loved, but i think maybe you were a figment of my imagination. How do i reconcile this? I dont believe there is a way because you wont talk to me anymore. By now, i dont even know if we could still talk to eachother like we once did. Would our love flourish again? Or have we changed too much. Would my heart once again awaken, even for you? Or would it also be silent in attempts to love even you. I dont know. 

The uncertainty of life would have been so much easier with you by my side. Children knowing us as mom and dad, family recognizing our love as what is real. These things i truly dreamed of for a long time, though no more. Love should have been enough for us both, but it wasn't. I know without a doubt i could have been enough for you, though i wasn't given a chance. Now i am surrounded by a life ive built, one taken from me by society, and all i see are empty remnants that we should have filled together. We were supposed to write a love story that would be the envy of all around us but now, instead our lives are ordinary. Even today, i dont know if a coming together would write the same story. I think maybe our time has passed forever. Lord, why must such injustice exist? My heart once so open and full of love, now dulled, broken, and lifeless in the face of a middle aged man. Why was i given such depth of love only to watch it be lost? 

Why does your face, Allie, show up in my dreams? Why do i remember us and you don’t? How did you do that? Can you show me how to view you as disposable, as you have viewed me? Can you perhaps find my heart where you abandoned it, and bring it back to me? Maybe i can bring it back to life again. Maybe there might be a woman who can ignite it again. A bright eyed woman who will see me as valuable enough to marry and have children with. I still hold on to hope for this though im sure its hopeless. 

One girl caught my eye Allie, about two years ago. Her name was Jamie. I looked into her eyes for the first time and for a moment in time i felt as if there was hope. But my requests to date were denied, and as she left she had no idea that she extinguished a tiny flame of hope that had ignited in me. It was the smallest possible size, but it was there. Time would prove that her beauty and femininity was skin deep. Beyond that was a dull replication of all the others. And, most poignantly she wasn't you. Do you look at him and say “He’s not Noah?”. i suppose not, because as you held all the cards such a thought would have brought you home to me.

I will try to sleep now, though likely wont. I am tortured with a decade now of loving you with no end in sight, and reassurance that you will never be home again. Somehow i hope you might read these letters, one day, and know how loved you were. Goodnight.

Noah.