My Dear,
when the time finally comes, and I get married, I will lay my heart in his hands like the last period of a novel, the ending of a story and the beginning of so much more.
There will be chapters of my life he will not know, there will be memories that were not with him.
And that would be okay.
Because there will be more that are, there will be times where he will look at me and realizes that I am his and yet, all at once, not.
The sands of time have kept fragments of my heart,
Father Time keeping hostage parts of me I barely remember anymore.
But my husband will know that despite the cruelty of ancient calendars,
We can buy new ones together.

And my dear,
when I have a daughter
I will tell her stories of galactic heroes and princesses who saved themselves as I tuck her into bed every night.
And as much as I would like to have pointed across the room when she asks me about my first love,
I will instead have to tell her of the thief who disappeared into the fabric of time;
fading into the background of a life still living,
people and moments buried deep in the back of our minds.

If my daughter ever cursed at me with a vibrant red face that I knew nothing about having my heart broken by true love at the age of sixteen, I will whisper your name.
And when she hesitates and asks me what I said, I will tell her about you.
I will tell her how we loved like our hearts were radioactive flames that burned us until we were scarred and scalded,
too broken, and charred to know how to recognize the love we once had.
I will tell her about the times we had danced in the rain like fire hydrants on street corners,
never caring about the building fevers in our foreheads as we overheated from the sun showers,
prancing gracefully as if we did not care;
because we didn’t.

And when she comes home and runs to her room,
believing she is too old to crawl into her mother’s arms and cry
about the boy who haunted her with the dial tone of their final conversation,
I hope she has friends who can do that for me.
I hope that she has friends who
don’t think it’s cool to slit wrists and poke purple bruises after beatings.
I pray that my daughter knows that it is okay to cry.

I will teach her about the times where you and I had learned the hard way
that the ups and downs don’t have to mean the constant endings,
fragments where our hearts were broken so deeply
we almost didn’t recognize each other’s face anymore.
I want to tell her, that it’s not uncommon for love to hurt
no matter how passionate you feel it grow in your chest;
because most times,
those are the ones that hurt the most.

When my daughter comes home for Christmas,
I will see a spark in her eye that reminds me of you
and how you always use to tell me
the world is stock piled with second chances.
Maybe that will be the moment when I think of you
and be able to keep my heart together,
instead of breaking apart.
For it was because of you that my daughter was standing there,
because you gave me so many chances that lead me here.

You may not be standing here, my dear.
But you are still here with me in my mind,
somewhere buried within the fragments of time.
You’ve taught me that it is okay to miss someone
who has been long gone,
because they will always be a part of your life.