Sometimes the tears come and I do not stop them. They play their game and cover me like a blanket. They become a refuge I seek that is familiar. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by love that is here for me and overwhelmed by the love I can no longer give but still feel. It arrives at my side when I think of a laugh, a smile, a joke. It is a love letter I no longer read that sits folded along the original crease in the envelope in the box in the closet up high on a shelf forgotten and when I come across it every few years I am always surprised at its existence, that something so profound is now just a record of my past. I run my fingers along the pencil marks as if to capture what you expressed to me and for the slightest nanosecond the wonder of our time returns. Images flash forth and I thank God that our paths crossed a lifetime ago that day on the school bus when I noticed you and knew not that our futures would intertwine, but that there was something about you that I could not verbalize but only express as the beauty and emotion of the hand caressing the silhouette of your chiseled face, that which can only be verbalized in the nuances of silence, the shadows and bends in the quiet.