My darling,

I have written you three letters today and burned two. This third one I will not send either, because a woman is not supposed to feel a thing this size before she has been given leave to, and I have never once in my life waited for leave, but I am trying, for you, to have a little dignity about it. This page is where the dignity comes to die quietly.

You have ruined ordinary things for me. I cannot drink a cup of coffee now without thinking of that morning at the little table by the window, your hair wrecked from sleep, the way you held the cup in both hands like it might make a run for it. I catch myself smiling at strangers in the street for no reason on this earth, and the reason is you, the reason is always and only you now, and it is becoming a genuine problem.

Is this the thing the songs are about, then? I thought them silly my whole life. They were not silly. They simply could not manage the size of it, not one of them.

I will see you on Thursday and I will be perfectly composed. I will ask after your sister. I will not breathe one word of this.

But I have written it down the once, so that somewhere in the world it is true, and at full volume.