My husband,

Twenty-two years, and I have never once said any of this to your face. I won't today either. I already know how the morning goes. I'll come down, I'll hand you your coffee, I'll say happy anniversary, you'll say it back, and that will be the whole of the ceremony. So the rest of it goes here, where I don't have to watch you get embarrassed.

This morning was completely ordinary and I nearly cried into the sink over it. You came down before the coffee was ready, hair doing its insane thing, and you didn't say good morning. You said "did you sleep okay" first, before a single word about your own self, the way you have every morning since the year the baby wouldn't. You don't even know you do it. It's load-bearing, that question. It holds the whole house up.

People think long love goes quiet. They're wrong, or we got lucky, or both. I still get the jump in my chest when I hear your key in the door. I still take the worse chair so you get the one facing the window. I still lie straight to your face about how much chocolate is left.

There were years I didn't like you. I'm allowed to say it, you'll never read it. The year of the move. The year you went somewhere behind your eyes and I couldn't follow you in. We stayed anyway, the both of us, stubborn as two old dogs, and the staying turned itself back into this. Into a man who asks if I slept okay before he is even properly awake.

I would marry you again tomorrow. In a far worse dress. Knowing all of it in advance, the move, the silence, the snoring that could wake the dead.

Especially the snoring. Don't you ever stop. It's how I know, in the dark, without opening my eyes, that you're still here.

I'll say the small version downstairs in a minute. This is the big one. It's the only place it ever gets said.