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                fo         image via wikipedia

Dearest Ginny,

     I was going through some dusty boxes in the attic this morning and came across a bundle of your old love letters from many years ago.  Heaven knows why I still have them.  I haven’t read them since before you were married.  Out they go but not before they stimulate the cobwebs in my memory bank one more time.  I’ll take them to the burn pile, read them again one by one and touch a match to them.  Almost every letter contains the word forever.  Funny thing about young love–forever didn’t seem like such a long time and I had to smile where you used dashes to indicate bad words you were too shy to spell out.  This one brought back the first time you gave me a French kiss inside the old covered bridge.  I was a green farm kid and that kiss was like causing me to o.d. on testosterone and made me wonder where you learned it.  If there was ever any question that I loved you before, there was certainly none after that kiss.  Soon after, you took from me that which no other girl/woman ever could receive–me only 16 years old.  I was mildly surprised at your tender age to learn that I was not your first.  It’s not something I was proud of that I made you cry when I asked for my class ring back but when I learned you had an agenda than didn’t jive with mine I had no choice.  You told me you wanted to get pregnant so you could quit school.  Uh uh.  I was still facing the military draft, had no job, no prospects.  I certainly was not ready for fatherhood but it did not have anything to do with sowing wild oats.  I still thought I was in love.  When you got your wish and had to marry the truck driver who was always flirting with you when you were a waitress at the truck stop I was already in the Navy.   When your little boy came I had to smile at the irony.  It didn’t happen until you were already 16–you could’ve quit school anyway and not have been burdened as a teenaged mom.    But, I guess things worked out–pretty soon the little girl came along.  I heard your life was not a bed of roses  and I was sorry cancer took your trucker too soon.  Too bad about your daughter getting mixed up with the wrong crowd and, at age 40, your son is back living with you after losing his license to booze and you have to drive him back and forth to work.  Almost all of your letters are burned now.  Hah!  Some of them still have a slight whiff of cheap perfume after all this time.   I guess I could pick up the phone and say, Hey Ginny, remember me? but I won’t.  In fact, when I sign this letter I’m going to burn it with the rest of them.  No use trying to open a door that’s been sealed tight with the cement of time.  I’ll close now as your letters turn to ashes of a forgotten love.   Besides, smoke or something is getting in my eyes.

                                                         All my love           Sincerely, Ken