morning after
thoughts about the impermanence of a hook up written in permanent marker in the places he touched
by Lindsay Bottos
Allie’s last letter to Noah - The Notebook
27 notes // reblog
Dear Noah,I write this letter by candlelight as you lie sleeping in the bedroom we have shared since the day we were married. I see the flame beside me and it reminds me of another fire from decades ago, with me in your soft clothes, and I knew then we would always be together, even though I wavered the following day. My heart had been captured by a southern poet, and I knew inside that it had always been yours. Who was I to question a love that rode on shooting stars and roared like crashing waves? For that is what it was between us then and that is what it is today.I remember coming back to you the day after my mother left. I was so scared because I was sure you would never forgive me for leaving you. I was shaking as I got out of the car, but you took it all away with your smile. “How about some coffee?” was all you said. And you never brought it up again in all our years together.Nor did you question me when I would leave and walk alone during the next few days. When I came in with tears in my eyes, you always knew whether I needed you to hold me or to just let me be. I don’t know how but you did, and you made it easier for me. Later, when we went to the small chapel and exchanged our rings and made our vows, I looked into your eyes and knew I had made the right decision. More than that, I knew I was foolish for ever considering someone else. I have never wavered since.
We had a wonderful life together, and I think about it a lot now. I close my eyes sometimes and see you with speckles of grey in your hair, sitting on the porch and playing your guitar while little ones play and clap to the music you create. “You’re a better father than you know,” I tell you later, after the children are sleeping.
I love you for many things, especially your passions: love and poetry and fatherhood and friendship and beauty and nature. And I am glad you have taught the children these things, for I know their lives are better for it. They tell me how special you are to them, and it makes me feel like the luckiest woman alive.You have taught me as well, and inspired me and supported me in my painting, and you will never know how much it has meant to me that you were always there, encouraging me. You understood my need for my own studio, my own space, and saw beyond the paint on my clothes and in my hair. I know it was not easy. It takes a man to do that, Noah, to live with something like that. And you have. For forty-five years now. Wonderful years.You are my best friend as well as my lover, and I do not know which side of you I enjoy the most. I treasure each side, just as I have treasured our life together. You have something inside you, Noah, something beautiful and strong. Kindness, that’s what I see when I look at you now, that’s what everyone sees. Kindness.I know you think me crazy for making us write our story before we finally leave our home, but I have my reasons and I thank you for your patience. I never told you why, but now I think it is time you knew. We have lived a lifetime most couples never know, and when I look at you I am frightened by the knowledge that all this will be ending soon. For we both know my prognosis. I worry more about you than I do about me, because I fear the pain I know you will go through. There are no words to express my sorrow for this.I love you so deeply, so incredibly much, that I will find a way to come back to you despite my disease, I promise you that. And this is where the story comes in. When I am lost and lonely, read this story—just as you told it to the children—and know that in some way I will realize it’s about us. And perhaps, just perhaps, we will find a way to be together again.
Please don’t be angry with me on days I do not remember you— we both know they will come. Know that I will always love you, and no matter what happens, know that I have led the greatest life possible. My life with you.Noah, wherever you are and whenever you read this, I love you. I love you deeply, my husband. You are, and always have been, my dream.Allie
