Postcards

"To our greatest treasure"

"We miss you so much"

"All our love"


The rays of the sun sparkle over the waters in the photograph.
Like her love, they reach out over the oceans, covering, warming, yearning..

I imagine her, radiant from recent pregnancy, proud and beautiful and dressed in fine Italian vetements.

I imagine his hands holding this golden note, these shining words.

I wonder if he ever wrote back.

The postcard rests in the kitchen now, decayed like last week's peppers. I don't know why she keeps it with next week's Pirate Party invitation and her mother's Merry Christmas card.

I am not one to leave a rotten egg inside the carton with fresh ones. But these decaying corpses are everywhere here.

Everywhere I turn there is a painting or a letter or a photo that screams out I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU I GODDAMN LOVE YOU

and i always will

even when you tear the walls down onto my head

even when these walls grow cold

and the silence pervades


On every wall on every shelf on every table she has written it there: I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER.