My Darling,
I love you with the kind of heat that is produced by the coils on an electric stove. As in, you might think that it’s cooled off but even after an hour of dish washing, you can turn around and SIZZLE, it’s still hot and you can accidentally burn yourself. And then you have to run your fingers under tepid water to try to bring down the swelling and reduce discoloration, but no matter what even hours later the throbbing remains.
Your smell reminds me of roses wrapped in more roses, but then also sprayed with the perfume that my first grade teacher Mrs. Moschetti used to wear. Rest assured, hers was a captivating aroma, as I think I have mentioned is yours, my sweet.
I love your laugh. Especially when you go into those uncontrollable wheezing fits and I have to get your inhaler. The moments in which I can administer medical treatment are truthfully when I feel closest to you!
I love your witty comments about movies that I have never seen, and that you talk so knowledgably about these movies for hours without end, literally sometimes, without interruption. Some (stupid) people say that spending so much time on plot summary would make for extremely boring conversation! But I could listen to the musical lilt of your summarizations of 1960’s French films that I will never, ever see, for hours.
I love that you can so perfectly caricature my friends. You’re so observant and perceptive in picking up their insecurities! You surprise me every time you do a perfect impression of Frank’s speech impediment. I really wish he could hear it, but too bad about his social anxiety disorder—which, again, I have to say, you really nailed it! Oh and that one time that you perfectly skewered my best friend from college for his former drug-addiction. Wow, what a riot. You have a unique God-given ability to notice people’s faults and hammer away at them like a hammer that knows how to hit the most vulnerable parts of a person’s emotional makeup over and over again.
I love that you take forever to get ready to go anywhere. To the point that we are always—and this is the best part—exactly the right amount of time late to any party. I feel so fashionable around you! We can show up hours after an event has started and people almost always stop and look at us in interesting ways as we stand in the door holding the bottle of wine that you so deftly picked by its astonishingly low price. People really do notice when couples realize how to make an entrance, and they could all learn from your mastery of this particular subjet d’etiquette.
I love your adventurous side, even when it means that I might have to miss work because you have left me tied to the wooden board that you so devilishly keep hidden under your bed. Vixen! Thou hast skewered my heart verily! Sometimes (and, really, this is the minority of cases by far!) it feels fiendishly sinful to skip work and not call in sick because I have to spend the day trying to wiggle from your leather restraints. And I wonder why you insist on calling me Steve during these exercises, which in any other condition would seem a little bit strange, but if nothing else THIS is a testament to how comfortable I have become with you, darling. Because most of the time, I just laugh and try not to fight it because I look forward to you coming home and freeing me so that I can buy you dinner at your (and really I should say “our”) favorite Indian restaurant. You are so passionate!
So on this special Valentine’s day, know that my fear of being alone keeps me in your rapt attention and makes me the servant to your every desire, m’lady! I look forward to wearing the leather underwear that you left on my bed this morning, and treating you to an evening that only the girl of my dreams deserves.
With Love,
Z.
