I met her a few months ago while I was traveling abroad. We started talking and somehow got through life, spirituality, philosophy, and poetry in a single sitting. We were there for hours.
We kept in touch after the trip. At first, we’d talk for hours every other day. I’d sometimes send her something I’d written about a subject we’d gotten into. If we’d spent half the night talking about a poem, it felt perfectly normal to pick up the thread the next day with a few paragraphs. To me, anyway.
I developed feelings for her and told her. We never became a couple, and over time I felt like I was doing more and more of the work to keep us talking. Eventually I decided to let it go. A short goodbye would have done the job, but by then I’d already thought of a poem.
It was by a famous poet, and I adapted it to fit what had happened between us. I also made a pencil sketch of the day we met and sent that along. The poem was long. Even without the illustration, it was the kind of message where your phone gives you a little scroll bar.
While I was working on it, I liked having a way to say something specific about a day that had meant a lot to me. Once I’d sent it, I started imagining opening it at her end. She’d gone from talking to me for hours to talking to me a lot less, and here I was giving her one more thing that could take a while.
I’m curious what women make of this sort of thing, especially when the guy is still someone you’re getting to know. Would you read the whole poem? And how much would that depend on whether you’d been hoping to hear from him in the first place?
