Postcard

Marty,
Thought you should know,
I started up smoking and can't stop and it's all your fault.

I don't blame it on the stress.
I endured too much in my day for weak excuses like that.
I can't blame it on those TV girls and their fashion.
I'd never fit into the pants to match.
I can't blame it on insecurity or the peer pressure.
I never doubted myself for a day.

I blame it all on you and your leaving.
Since not long after that
is when I started forgetting things.

Forgetting the way your shirt collars always smelled of gasoline and pines.
Forgetting the sound of your footsteps in the morning
with the weight of your boots on the wood floor.
Forgetting things like where your smile ended
and the creases in your brow began.
Forgetting your kisses, always a guilty mix
of spearamint and tobbacco,
a taste I always hated.
That is until you left.

Not long after that,
on our front porch,
the one you built,
is when I realized that sometimes,
love has a funny way of tasting like hate.

The kids tell me I'll shrivel up and get cancer of the lungs.
But I don't quite mind.
Long as I get to close my eyes
and get kissed each night with your memory.

If you come back down the road in your red pick up truck,
just like you did the night we ran away,
we can start over and forget this whole thing ever happened.

And I swear to God on my mother's grave
I'll up and quit the cigarrettes the minute you come home.

Just come home, Marty.

Til my dyin day,
Jean