Minus One

These days I walk beneath a lonely sky, crying deep, crying still. Sound is locked behind the iron door of a grief too deep for tears.

Perhaps, if I walk us back in time, I can walk with you in the sunlight again, at least for a little while. So while I still remember, Mag, I will return with you to the golden magic of our past, the life we shared, the love, from the 'then' of our beginning, to the 'now' of me minus you.

When and how did it begin, Mag? That early autumn day in nineteen sixty-four, when our separate paths finally converged? Or perhaps we didn't begin then. Thinking about it now, and feeling the essence of you so deeply embedded in my soul, I have to believe that the we of us began at the dawn of time; that we must have said our first "good mornin', darlin," then. Perhaps that September afternoon, was when we found each other again. It was such a beautiful day.

You'd brought the whole picnic works. Even beer which I didn't drink. And coffee in a thermos which we both drank, leaning back, holding hands, and quiet talking, lover's talk...until dusk started to creep over the surface of the water and lights began to come on in cottages across the lake. Then, as if it was understood in our hearts, without words, we got out of the car and walked to a grassy knoll hidden in a small grove of willow trees. And there, in the shadows of evening, the only sounds, the lapping of water against the shore, the whisper of leaves, and music from somewhere across the way, we completed the giving of our love.

Have you been remembering with me, darlin'? I think so. I think I felt you here. And I felt your love again.

I just got out the letter you wrote the next day and read it over again. You said our day had been beautiful, and the first song you heard this morning as you were getting ready for work was, "Until There Was You." I won't set down the rest of your letter, and we know why. those feelings belong to you, to me, because loving made us one. As it has been since, and always will be.

Looking over our letters, I also found you weren't alone being anxious to put your feelings into words about our day, From the date on the envelope of my letter, I got one off to you early the following morning. And you know what that letter told you about my feelings. In one of the early letters, you wrote it was a miracle what we'd found. And it surely was, my love, and will always be. Because you were the magic that made it so for me. You are my magic one. Your family, no one, knew why I called you Mag, short for magic. We knew. It was something just between us.