Sunset by the Ocean.

I’m writing you this because I want you to know that I’m not afraid anymore, I’m not afraid of being. I’m not afraid of love. I’ve spent so much of my life in that place that I lost myself to the fear, so lost that I couldn’t even enjoy the beauty and wonders of a sunset. So afraid that on most days I couldn’t see beyond the horizon, caught up in could-haves whose ghosts chased my shadows for what seemed like a lifetime.

I remember the one time you asked me what I think about the ocean. I told you about my one and only time as a little boy when my father took me to see it, I’d never seen so many bodies with the same complexion as me gathered in one place where joy was in abundance. The ocean seemed welcoming to them but to me, the joy showed me a reflection of my true self. Being so young , I didn’t get it so I feared it. My father grabbed me by the shoulders and, with disappointment in his eyes, said “what kind of man fears the water?” and I too wondered “what kind of man fears himself?”

The very next weekend after hearing my experience, you took me to the beach to watch the sunset, and you said “see it’s not a place of fear but a place where the fragile and beautiful gather and where the sun takes messages from this world to the next”.

“Fragile and beautiful”. I now know that the soul of a person is built like that, divine and vulnerable.

But where I came from there was no place for fragility or beauty. I think that my father always knew that I was different… and queer. So he tried to shame it out of me, and for a time I believed the shame and I hated my reflection for years and years. Covered myself with things that would make him less angry and make me manlier in his eyes. I wanted to be like him, I didn’t know that it meant being a man with no dreams, just hints of emptiness. Void.

I guess I really just want to thank you for changing me for the better. You gave me the courage to climb mountains and stop living in the shadows of a man who was tormented by the what-ifs of his youth and other things he got from the void. You gave me wings and said “go, go on and fly, let’s reach for the heavens together”, with a look in your eyes that let me know that you’d catch me when I fell.

It took a while to see me different and you had a hand in that. You made me face the truth and for that I thank you. You came into my closet that I had fashioned into my own and brought me out into the light, so blinding at first but eternally warm. Every day your gestures and sounds became my routine and every night your touches and moans became a prayer to me. It was the little things like how your fingertips felt against my skin, so foreign yet welcomed. How the sun hit your beautiful brown skin at the perfect moment, right before it reached high noon and made it seem like you were made of gold.

Those things became my salvation, even how you managed to burn eggs every single time you tried to make them, it was such a mystery. I never thought I’d miss burnt eggs. But I do.

But my favourite prayer was you.

Your kisses linger you know? They’re like my favourite dessert. The sweetness lingers but then again everything about you lingers, even after all these years I can still feel the smooth texture of your lips. And how your skin got a little rough by your wrists because there was a time when you were young and it's wasn't so peaceful in the deep.

I remember the first time we met, your confidence scaring the lion I thought I had in me. From the moment you taught me to love myself and all my reflections, I knew that I would follow you to the ends of the world and I did. “Les Confins Du Monde” you said.

Les Confins Du Monde… to the ends of the world, with you? Any day.

If I could do it all over again I would and I wouldn’t change a thing. I wouldn’t change my father and his wrath that I mistook for love and guidance, I wouldn’t even change that Thursday morning that took you from me and dimed your light from this world. I wouldn’t even change our final moments in that hospital room when you let me know that you know I would do the right thing.

And now here I am doing the right thing… letting you go.

And watching the sunset by the ocean, hoping that it will carry my final words to you…

“I love you, my sunset.”