Dear S.,
Everywhere I’ve ever lived, I’ve met someone with your name, and loved them. But what’s in a name? Because yours, theirs, means princess and you’re neither Disney nor diva. Plus, there’s only one of you. You are as uncommonly kind as a roughing the passer call in favor of the Steelers; football and your kindness, that’s how we first spoke. Oh and BOOKS. Our jobs were headlines and deadlines, but we tried to make every last pica hold more—volumes fat and slim, bestsellers and self-pubbers, kid lit and 50 Shades. We burned to mark pages. Anyone’s heart-words deserve more column inches than shootings, heroin, teachers molesting students, or social conservativism. Oh, the public needs to know those evils? The public needs to read more books!—and, we conceded, Sunday’s game scores. Sweet as you are, you could make me cackle with your foul-mouthed lambasting of the AFC North and archaic content management systems. Perfect-bound print is not archaic! we swore under and above our breath even while gasping for a vacation, even as we paginated under duress, defied our check-signers. Books. We fought for books, you first, then side by side we insisted in all the protest ways except hunger strikes, because the break room table always had snacks and we’re only human. Then you left. Then I left. Leavings are like closing books. Love letters are like opening them again.
xo S
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another writing mom 