"Black is when I tell you I love you with my eyes closed."

For Valentine’s Day, an excerpt from my novella Another Name For Autumn. A love letter, of course. 

“Totem Captain,

Since the beginning of time people have been loving each other. I’d like to say I don’t have the words to tell you how much I love you but I do and I say them to you every day. They sound like this: "Good morning.”

Every time I say good morning to you, my heart fills with so much love that the only thing I can do is spend the rest of the day giving it to you. I spend the rest of the day filling the corners of our home with my love for you. When I make our tea, it is what fills our mugs and it is your love for me that keeps us warm. I listen to your songs and my heart fills still more and when I sing my made up words, they all mean I love you. When I paint, every color tells the story of our forever. The yellow is when I fall in love with your smile, red, when seasons change and my love takes root deeper than Eucalyptus in the ground, blue is the color of the sky the day we walked in the rain and my heart fell from the clouds and came back to me. I will save other colors for another letter or a song I will sing to you in the morning, but because I know you will wonder, my love, black is when I tell you I love you with my eyes closed. “ 

I dipped my fingers in paint, yellow and red and blue and black, and one by one I made fingerprint hearts on the page along the bottom where you’re supposed to sign your name. I would have signed my name but the day my heart came back to me, Finley told me my name is a song and I don’t know how to write music.