"His Elderly Father as a Young Man."
This happened before I met your mother:
I took Jennie Johanson to a summer dance,
and she sent me a letter, a love letter,
I guess, even if the word love wasn't in it.
She wrote that she had a good time
and didn't want the night to end.
At home, she lay down on her bed
but stayed awake, listening to the songs
of morning birds outside her window.
I read that letter a hundred times
and kept it in a cigar box
with useless things I had saved:
a pocket knife with an imitation pearl handle
and a broken blade,
a harmonica I never learned to play,
one cuff link, an empty rifle shell.
When your mother and I got married,
I threw the letter away -
if I had kept it, she might wonder.
But I wanted to keep it
and even thought about hiding places,
maybe in the barn or the tool shed,
but what if it were ever found?
I knew of no way to explain why
I would keep such a letter, much less
why I would take the trouble to hide it.
Leo Dangel
What do you think?
Im torn on this one. While I feel its perfectly normal for me to keep something of my late ex's, I'm not so sure I would be OK with my husband keeping something of his ex's....."late" or not!
ReplyDeleteI guess it depends on what it is. My first boyfriend (from High School!) used to give me old Stephen King books and even when we broke up I never gave them back.
ReplyDeleteMy second boyfriends cards (and that other cheesy stuff) though landed in the trash can.
Honestly. I wouldn't be ok with it. I don't want to find love letters of ex girlfriends in my boyfriends drawer (or whereever he would hide it)