Page 18

She walks in beauty like the night

of cloudless climes and starry skies

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

I stopped reading and clutched the letter to my chest. I’d initially thought his appreciation of poetry was just a romantic part of a persona he’d concocted. But he really did have a love of words, and he loved to share it with me.

Lord Byron was one of his favorites and he often cited him, just a line here or there.

But this –She Walks in Beauty– I do believe was my favorite.

I read the rest and pulled out another and another, smiling as I remembered how young we were back then, how naive. Then I laughed as I read one particular paragraph of his letter.

Darn it. I’ve been caught. Classmates saw me dropping a letter in the mailbox and questioned me about it. They can’t believe that I am actually taking pen to paper to write a letter to a girl...a girl in England, no less.

They insist that I ought to simply send you an email instead of what they call snail mail.

I hope you don’t agree with them. I don’t know why, but there is something about waiting for your response, not at my computer, but every day when I go check the mail.

Who knows. Maybe I’m just old fashioned the way my dad was.

I remembered my reply. I was adamant that we continue to write handwritten letters. I loathed emails with the exception of certain business communications.

And now, hugging those handwritten words...should I hug my laptop to my chest if he’d listened to his classmates? No. These letters were real. They were tangible and not in some...in some cloud somewhere.

I thought back to the letters I sent him. I had kept a few of the first drafts of certain letters. In one of them, I’d sent a favorite poem of mine.

Woods on a Snowy Evening, by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow

.

In so many letters he’d written about the snow that had fallen and that had temporarily blanketed the ground. On seeing this poem, I knew I had to send it to him.

He knew it, of course, but was nonetheless pleased I’d shared it with him.

I plunged my hand once more into that outer compartment of my suitcase and pulled out a letter; the last letter that he’d sent me.

Oh. A sharp pain suddenly squeezed at my heart, and I knew that reading the letter would only intensify that pain.

This was the letter he’d written a day prior to my sending him the letter my Aunt Sally had forced me to write him.

Tears flowed before I even began to read.

Hello, my lovely Penelope!