Letter to Stainless Steel: Unforgettable People

Unforgettable people, who remain in our memories, free of rust, as if they were made of stainless steel. Unforgettable people that make our hearts leap and our stomachs flutter, and who bring an everlasting smile to our faces.

They don’t necessarily have to have been in our lives for a very long time. They simply have a special something. Something that makes them stand out and which creates an exclusive feeling within us. This letter is dedicated to them:

You have spent your whole life with me, in mind and spirit. However, if you asked why, I could give you several reasons…or maybe none at all. I’d have to think about it, once over. So that you can understand: you’re a blue rose, surrounded by thousands of red roses.

You’re someone with whom I share an endless coffee break with or conversation. Someone I’d spent the night shift with at a quiet surveillance spot. You have a wand, and what you’ve produced within me is the closest thing to magic I have ever felt. It’s something along the lines of inexplicable.

I’m not talking about love or friendship. I’m talking about something that you have, which I have seen. I have also felt, smelled and enjoyed it.

On the other hand, when I talk about “you”, I’m talking about a very small group of people. I’m talking about only a handful of hearts that I’ve said are worthwhile. They’re worthwhile because they radiate joy and make the world a better place. The world I share with them. People made of stainless steel.

Stainless steel hearts

I have seen you help others without writing anything down in your “debt” column. I have seen you give, even beyond the point of sacrifice. It wasn’t just what you had left over, it was something you also needed and which you didn’t protect due to a fear of it being snatched away from you. Instead, you chose to share it.

I have seen you radiate joy at times when I expected you to be sad. Times during which I would have understood if you had crumbled, but I wasn’t counting on you being made of steel. Circumstances in which you have put my empathy to the test, because I honestly didn’t understand how you could lift others up from a collapse, which you never even contemplated for yourself.

I have heard you sing, have lost myself in your paragraphs, I have read your written word. I have hugged your poetry and have rested knowing you were in charge. With you I have learned that art has as many forms as it has creative inquiries and concerns.

Because a piano, despite having few keys, and a song, despite having the same notes, can be played in many very different ways.

Although most of the time you have left the same way a train pulls into a station to pick up passengers, but has decided to stay for a long while somewhere close by. Close enough to let me know that you will stay with me, forever. That is precisely what gives love a chest of perennial fortune.

Stainless steel emits light

Stainless steel, out of all of the ways I have appreciated you, in all of the souls in which you have lived in various ways, I have felt that you existed because the person you inhabited had achieved full recognition of themselves. Hence the fact that you could put, deposit, or share with others or with the ethereal something that is immensely special.

Yes, special, that is the word. Not different, because I am certain that even if you weren’t accompanied by all of those red roses, I would still be able to appreciate your blue color. Sky blue, deep ocean blue, hope blue. Your tone breezes, your rays of light or your well-understood and misguided passion. I’m also sure of the fact that others can also see everything I’ve described within you.

I can’t imagine a better material than yours to survive and overcome, to remain as a witness in the people who are lucky enough to find themselves with others who also wore you as skin.