Precious Stones from You

Your letters are like precious stones
dug from the mining holes of Burkina Faso,
sweated for beneath a merciless sun,
hidden in layers of unyielding earth,
where the pulse of the land keeps secrets
older than the ancestors of memory.

Each word you write
is a gem
that has survived pressure and depth—
words that shimmer
with a light not born of gold
but of the soul’s own alchemy.
And they arrive,
sometimes days late,
creased with distance,
perfumed with your breath of longing,
dusted with dreams and a silence that speaks
louder than any thunderclap.

I unfold them gently,
the way a geologist might cradle
the first flash of diamond
in a fistful of dirt.
Each syllable,
each carefully curved sentence,
is a glimmer
of something rare and
unmistakably yours.
You send them like a miner
sends up signals
from a shaft below the world—
a lifeline, a confession, a hope,
a story.

These letters—
I do not simply read them.
I listen to them.
I hear your pen scratch across the page
like footsteps across gravel paths
in the dusk of some forgotten village.
I hear the rain that must have fallen
while you wrote them,
how the sky wept outside your window
as if it too knew
the burden and blessing
of keeping your heart together
long enough
to place it into ink.

They are mine now,
to be cherished and preserved.
I store them in the quiet drawer
of my soul’s museum,
next to my childhood dreams,
a pressed flower from someone who once loved me,
and a coin from a country I never visited
but always wanted to.

Sometimes I imagine
those mines in Burkina Faso—
the darkness, the labor,
the calloused hands reaching into stone
to coax something luminous into being.
I think of the boys who dig too young,
their backs bent by poverty,
their spirits held together by stories
whispered at night
in makeshift shelters,
stories of futures
bought one handful of dust at a time.

And yet,
from such pain,
something shining still comes.

That is what your letters are—
shining things
born of effort and ache.
You dig deep into yourself
and pull out tenderness,
like a miner unearths
an opal or garnet—
not for commerce,
but for love.

And I,
I am a collector of your stones.

I line them up in my mind’s cabinet
under glass, under moonlight,
watching how they refract
the many shades of your soul—
sapphire sadness,
emerald laughter,
ruby rage,
amethyst wonder.

Your handwriting—
even that is a jewel.
Looping and precise,
it moves across the page
like a cartographer’s pen,
charting the terrain of your inner continents.
Your "e" curls like a seashell,
your "g" dips like a swallow in flight.
I trace them with my fingers,
feeling not just the texture of paper
but the contours of your presence.

And the metaphors you send—
how you compare your solitude
to the echo inside a mountain cave,
your joy to mangoes eaten
under a tree with no name—
they are worth more
than sapphires or gold dust.

When the world forgets how to feel,
when cities drown in the white noise
of ambition and neon,
your letters arrive
like rain in drought,
like prayer in silence,
like breath in suffocation.

They are mine now,
yes, mine,
but I do not possess them
like a thief with a diamond.
I hold them the way
one might hold a child
or a secret
or the final note of a lullaby
sung by someone long gone.

I reread them
as if by doing so
I might find something new—
a hidden glint of emotion
beneath a turn of phrase,
a shadow in the comma,
a tear caught in the tail
of a lowercase “y.”

There are nights
I sleep with your letter beneath my pillow,
and I swear
your words seep into my dreams
and bloom
as strange flowers in the fields of sleep.
You write of mango trees and ferry rides,
of old radios and broken clocks,
of wind that smells like cardamom—
and suddenly, I am there,
walking beside you
in places I have never seen,
hearing stories
you never told aloud.

Some people hoard riches.
Some chase them
down rabbit holes of currency,
battling each other
for shares and silver.
Let them.

I have your letters.

I have these stones
cut from the deepest seams
of your being,
written in solitude,
delivered with trembling hands
across time and uncertainty.

I will keep them
when the colors fade from photographs,
when the echoes leave my name,
when the world forgets
what intimacy once meant
in a time of screens.

Your letters will remain—
pressed into my memory,
bright as constellations,
heavy as longing,
precious as truth.

And when I grow old
and language fails me,
I will still remember
how they made me feel:
Held.
Understood.
Chosen.

For your letters are not just words.
They are the essence of you
sent across distance,
against forgetting,
against silence.

They are mine now,
to hold forever dear
to my heart—
these living, breathing,
precious stones
dug from the tenderest corners
of your love.

#Poetry #OfTheHeart #LettersAsGems #PoetryLovers #Emotional #DeepLove #LiteraryLove #MiningMetaphors #CherishedWords #PoeticLetters