Anniversary

Slowly, carefully, open the pages, pull out the waxy leaves within. Tiny stems of little white flowers, arranged like pearls on a string, dried and pressed, lie in wait. The same flowers your father stepped out into the woods to pick, her father keeping him company. Forty years ago.

Forty years ago they promised to stand with each other through thick and thin, to endure the hardships of life without letting go, to grow old next to one another, no matter the storms around the bend. Somehow, impossibly, they did. They look at each other, at themselves, now, and can not recognize the wrinkled, aching bodies that appear before them. But they long for each other when they are apart, and I think they would not know how to weather the storms, how to enjoy the ride, or how to grow old, without the other.

Forty years later you place the flowers carefully in the frame, consider initials, or dates, or simply letting the petals speak for themselves. Wrap the gift, address the package. Imagine forty years with a person who makes you whole.

Imagine forty years
without.