this isn’t a poem or an original or anything i’m just screaming right now at this book i’m reading it’s killing me. what the fuck. i can’t. i cannot. there is no ability to can at this very moment.
the book is Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. there’s correspondence over email between the two lovers of the story, Alex and Henry. they live in different countries. not gonna get into the finer details but what they’ll do, at the end of every one of their emails, is add a historical excerpt of some letter between gay lovers through history.
this one absolutely killed me (but not before the actual email from Henry to Alex killed me more, wow what is love this redemptive mystifying purifying beautiful force oh my heavens):
from Michelangelo to Tommaso Cavalieri, 1533:
“I know well that, at this hour, I could as easily forget your name as the food by which I live; nay, it were easier to forget the food, which only nourishes my body miserably, than your name, which nourishes both body and soul, filling the one and the other with such sweetness that neither weariness nor fear of death is felt by me while memory preserves you to my mind. Think, if the eyes could also enjoy their portion, in what condition I should find myself.“
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ok i needed to come back to this and add. i NEED to share the email that Henry wrote to Alex. basically, Henry is the prince of England, Alex is the First Son of the United States. Henry is explaining how, with the death of his father, most of the memories of his childhood are tainted with grief due to his father’s absence. there is a void in all of them.
so he goes on to explain how he compartmentalized… well, basically his entire adolescence. he stuffs them into rooms — the actual rooms he uses are ones in his royal palace. but then he describes how he couldn’t fit Alex and his love and adoration for him into any of them.
i think i need to use photos instead of typing it in, there’s a decent amount:
had me weeping. absolutely beautiful.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 