August 30th, 1994

Kathleen,

I awoke with the taste of your mouth, your flesh, your touch in my mouth, my brain, my hands, my eyes, my everything. All day I remembered and smiled quietly to myself.

I spoke softly to others.

Everything reminded me of you.

The blush on a frosty pink rose.

The resonant intensity of blue lobelia standing staunchly in the terracotta pot under the golden chain tree.

The sun, the sky, the cool clear breeze.

The fullness of September.

profusions of clear color: of roses

of lavender and white impatiens

of misty, heatherish caryopterous

of deep blue veronica and salvia.

Everything shining, new and clear, calling to me: “I am the Earth. This is my fullness, my beauty, my everything.”

And the Earth’s exuberance is also mine.

—

from Dear Sappho: A Legacy of Lesbian Love Letters, collected with permission by Kay Turner

“PAULA TO KATHLEEN: Paula (age 53) and Kathleen (age 52) became lovers at the end of August 1994, two months after Paula declared in a note to her friend of three years - a poet/short-story writer who had been married for thirty-one years - that she was in love with her.” - p.155)