For you
You saved the letters I wrote
The rough prose and youthful hand an unfamiliar receptacle for familiar feelings
I found them in your dresser drawer
The one place truly yours in a life totally shared
I had never opened it
Not in all the years since we moved in together
Not through the highs and the lows of decades together
Not even those final hard years of sickness
I thought about keeping them
A memory of how I felt
The love that makes what I have to do the hardest thing I ever did
But I don’t need to
My love for you is the only thing still bright as the rest of me fades
I instead have decided to place them with you
In the casket
As you take your final rest
For those letters
Like my heart
Are for now and forever
For you
joe2poetry 