THE PUBLIC SHELF

Open when you need to know I love you

I love you when you sing in the car and get every single word wrong, with total confidence. I love you when you steal the blanket and then deny it with the blanket still in your hands. I love you when you go quiet and I can't tell why, and I love you when you finally tell me.

I loved you on the worst day of this year, the one in the hospital waiting room when neither of us could eat the vending machine crackers. I loved you on the best one, at the lake, when you fell off the dock in your clothes on purpose to make me laugh. I want you to know it was the same amount. It doesn't go up and down with the weather. I checked.

I don't think I say it right out loud. I say it in the coffee I bring you, and the gas I put in your car without telling you, and the way I save you the last bite. But I've been thinking that you should hear it in words, at least once, somewhere you can keep.

So here it is, in ink. I love you. On the days you're easy to love and the days you're sure you're not.

You're not hard to love. You never were.

More letters on the public shelf · Write your own