Pages of inked cursive beginning with My darling
or My sweetest and ending with Yours faithfully
until the end of time. Not this I love you
to the moon and back or I love you to Neptune
and back nonsense. Yet I don’t think I’ve
ever seen or heard of a single letter or card
my parents wrote to each other, or if they did so
at all in the history of their courting.
When one was away on a long trip,
I don’t recall the other receiving a postcard
in the mail. What gestures signaled the turn
from friendship to more than friendship,
what form their desire might have taken
in the face of social pressures to be reticent
or discreet? In yellowing pictures: his hand
on her knee as they smile formally; her hip
curving slightly in the direction of the little
flip of her hair, standing against their second-
hand car and the grimy backdrop of a garage.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
