My loving Cecile,

I was thrilled to behold the glowing orb of a golden sun hove into view this dawn, bathing my darkling cubbyhole with its red-gold shafts of light. And then I had an Epiphany: the lady of my life. Indeed the Sun is reminiscent of you. Its radiance evokes your beauty; its light your fairness.

It thus happened that I couldn’t remain still anymore. My head reeled; my fingers twitched; and my legs quivered. Should I write a poem or croon a song in your honour–I was caught in a dither over what to do. Yet I was bursting to write a letter. It seemed that only a letter can calm the tumult of my heart and grant loving expression to my passion, my brimming emotions.

My adorable beauty, do not think it old-fashioned or asinine that I should pen a letter this day than engage the immediacy of text-messaging and email. Please do not–do not think so unkindly of me.

It is that I consider the letter the most appropriate vehicle for my thoughts of you–the humane art, as Virginia Woolf called it. Or what more humane an art is there than an engaging correspondence crafted in the most diverting and flourishing pen lines?

My lovely Cecile, I think it’s time we jettisoned all these norms of society and lead the lives that Mother nature fashioned for us. Let’s disrobe ourselves of the drab raiments of convention and together don the splendid attire of destiny. Ignore these imprudent conventions, my beloved, which try to repress our sexualities and stifle our passion. What contempt for love!

Like Anthony, I revel in your beauty, my sweetheart, and bask in your fellowship. Even as I puff every suck of this morning’s air whilst slouched over my desk scribbling these words, I can think only of you–your pulchritude, your gestures, your gait, your stance, your posture…your everything. Adorable woman, nothing compares to your slender face, to the blue azure of your eyes.

A fortnight ago, I thought I saw you in your country-fresh features as you sashayed from the billowing tides, like Venus emerging from the waves. You were such a feast for many a famished glance. For me, it was the thirst of many years I sought to slake. It was the hunger of many aeons that I sought to feed.

In that hour when we lay on the burnt ocher sands of Sunset Beach, exploring the scintillating landscapes of our bodies. It was that moment when I savoured the honeydew of your lips and the softness of your bosom amidst the heady rush of adrenaline that coursed through my blood and charred my arteries. Oh…never was love so divine. Never was romance so ethereal.

Regrettably, it was only a foray into the foggy space. But I have come to live for these velvet nights. Or God! I have come to come to crave those heavenly moments that we spent in the grey half light of the gloaming, when we played on our fleshs like on a Jew’s harp, murmuring notes of passion.

Do I sound lascivious? Forgive me, dear, for my entire being feels like a cauldron of passion, of desire.

My English rose, you haven’t a clue of the love you’ve inspired in me. Like Vital Sackville West, I’m reduced to a thing that hankers after Cecile, that pines for affection. I have you in my heart like the Madonna on a pedestal. Be my literary muse. Be my evil genius, as was Bosie Douglas to Oscar Wilde.

Take my hand, clasp it, and let’s amble along the shore this day and listen to the lilt-tunes of the birds, as did Caesar and Cleopatra. And we shall make a wish and kiss our love forever true. Together, we shall soar to the heights of heaven on the wings of angels.

I feel as though I’ve fallen from a cliff into the abyss of madness. A bout of sheer madness that has seized me. For, to tell the truth, there isn’t a recess in my brain into which thoughts of you haven’t penetrated. I’m obsessed with your eyes, which glimmer like the fishpools of Lebanon. So beautiful is your neck, which, when upturned, appears like the belly of a penguin. So dainty are your feet, long and slender like Rembrandt’s paint brushes. I love you–unflinchingly. And I know you do too. I relinquish my masculinity for you. I exult in my defencelessness and my ultimate surrender to your charms. Clasp me to your bosom and let’s walk gently into the night.

As always, till forever, I’ll love and adore you. This’s what I want to do, for as Shakespeare wrote:

Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s Day
All in the morning betime
And I am maid at your window
To be your Valentine.

With love
From Your Valentine

P.S: Do not grow cross with me, my beloved, for the shaky incoherence and lengthiness of my letter. It is the madness that has seized me that makes my thoughts like confused radio waves.

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Kingsley Charles wrote from the University of Calabar.
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