William Henderson

Your middle name was more difficult to choose. S, another letter from which I could choose, starts hundreds of names, but your mother and I saw the movie Cruel Intentions on our third or fourth date, and, well, Ryan Phillippe, who played Sebastian, is kind of hot. So I pushed for Sebastian and your mother, who also thinks Ryan Phillippe is kind of hot, consented.

Hell, according to Dante Alighieri, is comprised of nine circles of suffering within the Earth. But Dante missed a circle. Somewhere between gluttony and greed, or between greed and anger, or maybe even encompassing the entire nine circles is the Costco-on-Sunday-morning circle.

Let me interpret the medical jargon for you: That ache you feel may feel like a dull grind or like something is missing, maybe near your diaphragm, which makes eating impossible, or maybe inside your throat, which makes claiming to be OK impossible, or maybe elsewhere in your body, indicating that, along with your heart, you have lost a limb, an organ, or your future (the last is unlikely, since, congratulations, you are not dead).

I write. You know what I write because I write our story and you lived our story and I lived our story and for a while I thought my story turned your story turned our story would end ever after happily.

On my birthday, after screwing twice and before eating sushi, you point to a box on the table in your kitchen. A note on top of the box instructs me to wear me. Inside the box is a necklace, and on this necklace is a key you have been wearing on a necklace around your neck. The key, you told me, is the key to your childhood bedroom door.

Your waistline, because you end up eating some meals twice, like dinners, because both of them will want to eat dinner with you, and you will run out of reasons why you can’t.

Before, during, we created tracklists of songs by singers who knew what we felt before we knew what we felt or before we could tell each other what we felt, as if these CDs was easier than saying I don’t ever want to lose you; don’t leave me; I don’t know how to handle how much I feel for you; this CD is the closest thing to my heart that I can give you. Take it. Protect it. Love it. And, if you want, love me too.

The red light at the intersection where the store where you work is. Red and red and red, then green, and I am driving past the store where you work and I am on my way to a home I may not share for much longer with a woman who deserves to be married to someone who isn’t gay, but who is married to someone who is gay.