Most beloved Vinnie,
I am writing to you from Paris, but that's all I can tell you about where I am and what I am doing. No street name, no description of my work. In fact, I can tell you no facts, only feelings, but it makes me happy to write you about those.
I did not disappear because I stopped loving you. I was literally spirited away, and in many, many ways I'm glad it happened. All I regret, in truth, is leaving you, and each day that regret grows.
My darling, I love you more than a human being has a right to love - so much that it is as much pain as pleasure, so passionately that rather than give it up I would willingly give up my live. You are the air that I breathe, the food that I eat, my dreams and my fantasies. When my body aches, as it often does these days, I tell myself it aches for you. When I'm hungry, it's hunger for you. When I sleep, you are beside me.
When I sing - and that is rarely, except in my heart - you are my music.
I have no idea if this letter will reach you. Perhaps you will be in the American Army come to liberate France and - presto! - you will liberate me. But more likely we will never see each other again except in our mind's eyes. I am content with that. To have known you and loved you and made love with you and made music with you is enough for any lifetime, more full of life than any other human could experience in a hundred years.
I pray that you will live and be happy, that you will find another love - though not as profound, not as stirring, not as fulfilling as ours - and in loving her remember me.
As for me, I will remain for as long as my life shall last true only to you.
Do you remember the Schumann sonata we played together? I taught you to like Schumann, and now I will tell you the man of the most beautiful song he ever wrote - "Ich grolle nicht" - "I'm Not Angry."
Do not be angry with me, treasure of my soul, for leaving you, for I have not left you. I am with you always and will always be,
Your Mia
