Letters

 

Although we both loved books

and read voraciously, you never

were much of a writer, unlike me

with a roster of writing friends

whom I'd never met other than

through letters that went back and

forth over the years. Many years;

one now long dead, others not heard

from and one whose habit it was to

make carbon copies of all  her letters

certain that some day she would be

memorialized and everything she'd

ever written held in perpetuity by some

university trust. She had once erred

and sent me the carbon instead of

the original. I've never kept any

of the letters I've written, but one.

Alongside it is one you wrote to 

me at age 16, barely literate, but

profoundly dear, professing your

love for me. The other is one I had

written to you once when you were

away from home and our children

were small, to tell you that we all

were fine, and our youngest child

was digging up the backyard

determined to discover a dinosaur

egg. I've kept those letters, they're

precious, I just don't recall where I

placed them. But no mind, each

and every word is engraved in my

mind, never to be forgotten or mislaid.