Happy Valentine’s Day, Mrs. King
Will you thumb through the pictures when I am gone?
Will my face, made careworn and tired, be restored in your mind’s eye? I cannot know what it was you ever saw in me. I cannot understand how you could know that when I said those things all people say to one another, almost without thinking, that I would really mean them. I said it and only half believed it myself, uttering such extravagant pledges of dubious value. Not for want of them being true. But I am unreliable.
There is nothing in this world but to love, and be loved in return. In a hundred years the most important man you ever met is anonymous. In a thousand everyone is. We cobbled together a life around the table where we break the bread, and for a few thousand times we were as one. I saw your face in our children’s faces. You said you saw mine. The universe passed the plate, and we put in our offering. We are poor, but it’s enough for anyone to give. No man could do more. No man could ask for more.
I remember when I was lying on the bed like a dead thing, and you came into the room and thought I was asleep. I wasn’t asleep; I was gone from sight, and sound, and lost in a fever. I lay there in a puddle of sweat and more — my very life coming out of every pore, leaving nothing but a husk where a man used to be.
And you kissed me. I remember.
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