Box of Mornings

Here's your cigar box back that you gave to me with 12 nights inside, lined up 3x4, and I did my best with it. Sorry I wasn't ready until just before you were leaving town and I really couldn't find enough energy to change them all the way, but here it is: 12 mornings. I'm sure you'll still find some use with them. I can imagine you sitting on the bench at the train station with this box on your lap, checking the departure times and people walking by you pulling luggage, waiting with their paperbacks and magazines -- but you, all you wanted was that box and if you lift up the lid just a crack for one second, some morning will surely shine out. Scents probably too, mixing, as they were all 12 different mornings. You'll get bacon and hot coffee and steamy shampoo from the shower, toothpaste and, if it's a walking morning, maybe car exhaust and pollen, and you might just catch snippets and a mixture of these things if you open that box on your lap.

I know you'll want to give a few of those mornings away when you get home, a couple to the girls and maybe one to your grandfather. The one with the birds and the breeze, I think he'd like that one.

Hopefully you'll be able to save a few for yourself. If you are peeking at the train station or on the train, you might find the special one, well, I wouldn't call it the best or anything I mean of course I'd say all 12 are pretty damn good mornings especially with such pressed time.

But if you look in there and see it, remember that one's for you. Don't give it away. I recreated the one at the beach, that morning with white curtains breathing and muffled voices downstairs and just 2 inches of blue sky visible from bed, and I tried to add in the heartbeats even, but that's just standard, and the stillness, but you'll just have to hold that morning real still in your hands -- and if you do manage to hold that morning very still and you are very careful with it, that might be the only morning in the box you maybe could stretch out into the afternoon like taffy. I won't guarantee it but it's worth a try.

Enough of the preamble, you have the box. My love and regards to everyone and I again wish we could have had more time. On your next visit, I'll have that box of chocolates full of Mondays ready. If I start now, I should be able to get you at least a few 4th of Julys in there and maybe even a New Years, one from the 90's, I'll try.