of things from you.
God, what can I possibly write to make this better?
Here: I can’t decide if your emails make me miss you more or less. Sometimes I feel like a funny-looking rock in the middle of the most beautiful clear ocean when I read the kinds of things you write to me. You love so much bigger than yourself, bigger than everything. I can’t believe how lucky I am to even witness it—to be the one who gets to have it, and so much of it, is beyond luck and feels like fate. Catholic God made me to be the person you write those things about. I’ll say five Hail Marys. Muchas gracias, Santa Maria.
I can’t match you for prose, but what I can do is write you a list.
AN INCOMPLETE LIST: THINGS I LOVE ABOUT HRH PRINCE HENRY OF WALES
1. The sound of your laugh when I piss you off.
2. The way you smell underneath your fancy cologne, like clean linens but somehow also fresh grass (what kind of magic is this?).
3. That thing you do where you stick out your chin to try to look tough.
4. How your hands look when you play piano.
5. All the things I understand about myself now because of you.
6. How you think Return of the Jedi is the best Star Wars (wrong) because deep down you’re a gigantic, sappy, embarrassing romantic who just wants the happily ever after.
7. Your ability to recite Keats.
8. Your ability to recite Bernadette’s “Don’t let it drag you down” monologue from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
9. How hard you try.
10. How hard you’ve always tried.
11. How determined you are to keep trying.
12. That when your shoulders cover mine, nothing else in the entire stupid world matters.
13. The goddamn issue of Le Monde you brought back to London with you and kept and have on your nightstand (yes, I saw it).
14. The way you look when you first wake up.
15. Your shoulder-to-waist ratio.
16. Your huge, generous, ridiculous, indestructible heart.
17. Your equally huge dick.
18. The face you just made when you read that last one.
19. The way you look when you first wake up (I know I already said this, but I really, really love it).
20. The fact that you loved me all along.
I keep thinking about that last one ever since you told me, and what an idiot I was. It’s so hard for me to get out of my own head sometimes, but now I’m coming back to what I said to you the night in my room when it all started, and how I brushed you off when you offered to let me go after the DNC, how I used to try to act like it was nothing sometimes. I didn’t even know what you were offering to do to yourself. God, I want to fight everyone who’s ever hurt you, but it was me too, wasn’t it? All that time. I’m so sorry.
Please stay gorgeous and strong and unbelievable. I miss you I miss you I miss you I love you. I’m calling you as soon as I send this, but I know you like to have these things written down.
A
P.S. Richard Wagner to Eliza Wille, re: Ludwig II–1864 (Remember when you played Wagner for me? He’s an asshole, but this is something.)
It is true that I have my young king who genuinely adores me. You cannot form an idea of our relations. I recall one of the dreams of my youth. I once dreamed that Shakespeare was alive: that I really saw and spoke to him: I can never forget the impression that dream made on me. Then I would have wished to see Beethoven, though he was already dead. Something of the same kind must pass in the mind of this lovable man when with me. He says he can hardly believe that he really possesses me. None can read without astonishment, without enchantment, the letters he writes to me.
TWELVE
There’s a diamond ring on Zahra’s finger when she shows up with her coffee thermos and a thick stack of files. They’re in June’s room, scarfing down breakfast before Zahra and June leave for a rally in Pittsburgh, and June drops her waffle on the bedspread.
“Oh my God, Z, what is that? Did you get engaged?”
Zahra looks down at the ring and shrugs. “I had the weekend off.”
June gapes at her.
“When are you going to tell us who you’re dating?” Alex asks. “Also, how?”
“Uh-uh, nope,” she says. “You don’t get to say shit