I think of you as being a sleek river boat that has come into shore for fuel. I sit at the café table and watch you slip over the side of the boat onto the pier. You take the fuel hose from its slot and open your fuel tank lid.. I watch you casually as my eyes sweep the vista of the river and the campground on the opposite bank. But then I notice your wrist running along the tautness of the hose, and your free hand loosely in your pocket and I am intrigued.

Divorce loneliness from my fervent response to you since our first meeting. I am not desperate, I am hungry. Hungry for someone who inspires my conversational and sexual self. You might ask what conversation have we had other than, ‘let’s skip the movie and go back to bed’ . You would be right about the urgent nature of our togetherness. I want you every moment, whether I am lying in bed, adrift in a dream or trying to work.

When we made love last night, and I was covering you in little bites and licks like a cat, I thought of nothing except your body. I was nothing except an attendant to your curves, the muscles in your thighs and your stomach. I wanted to isolate every muscle and massage your body until you were relaxed and still along the bed sheets. And then I held back from touching you for a moment so that I could admire your loveliness.

Thirty years ago I wrote those lines in my office. I folded the page and placed it in an envelope and mailed it to you. I felt as if I were a spy, although I was single and unattached, by writing the words that might one day, many years after, be read by a descendent, a grown up child or a lawyer. Now you are dead. Even now, I am in love with you.