Heather Anne: repost

There will come a day when the changing of seasons will once again become a promise, when the voice of the spring bird is more song and less equinoctial alarm. In case you are keeping count, it is ten. Three winters, three springs, two summers, two autumns I have spent without you.

We said we could only live where the seasons acted like seasons. Summer should stick to you. Winter should demand fleece and a beanie. Snow isn’t probable, but always possible. Autumn is not autumn without sour cherry leaves and campfire smoke that lingers in your hair and permeates your skin, even after a shower. And Spring? First season strawberries from a roadside produce stand. You’ll know ‘em when you taste ‘em.

Someone asked me just the other day if I’d ever had a broken heart. I bypassed my first love, my college love, the propositional love, and every poor decision and wasted kiss in between and went straight to you. “I lost this friend once.”

The whole sentence was lie. Friend? Moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire. Lost is supposed to be synonymous with unredeemed. What does that make me? Once is laughable. The sun and moon conspire to make losing you perpetual.

Juliet didn’t like lunar imagery. Mercutio called it Petrarchan, love by numbers. You hate Shakespeare. You say eggs and legs like aygs and laygs. I hope you didn’t change that for him. It’s one of the best things about you. I like Shakespeare. It’s one of the best things about me.

Here’s a number. Six billion.

As in six billion people will go to sleep tonight without caring if you know the first season strawberries are in up on US-129.

You want to know what I have learned in ten seasons?

I love you.

It matters to me.