I maraschino’d my own cherries, jerkied my own beef—what other signs of self-reliance could you want?
WITLESS PROTECTION PROGRAM
You were adorable and rich, but you didn’t make me laugh.
NUDE FOR NOTHING
Your tepid response to my naked pictures means we are never speaking again.
BEYOND BETTY AND VERONICA
You’re the model for all the hot-girl characters in my comics.
WHAT’S MINE IS YOURS
I thought it was great that we had so much in common. Now I have nothing in my life to enjoy that doesn’t remind me of you.
A PRICE ABOVE FAKE RUBIES
Don’t forget: A glimpse of your boobs is worth a lot more than a string of Mardi Gras beads.
THE OLD STORY
Boy meets girl. They fall madly in love. It peters out for one of them. You, in this instance.
CLASS OF ’76
I wonder how things would have turned out had I gone to the gas station with you after the reunion.
THROWING CATCH PHRASES
If you wanted to do some damage, saying I didn’t have enough “wow factor” in bed did the trick.
WAYNE’S MANNERISMS
I’m over you like Batman is over losing his parents.
PRAYER WHEEL
I begged God to let me have you. Then I begged God to free me from you.
SAME-SAME
Dostoevsky said of Russian writers, “We all came out of Gogol’s overcoat.” And all my ideas about love came out of your jeans.
BUY-BYE
So I fell in love with our broker. Sue me. Oh wait—you did.
GONE GREEN
I’ll always be jealous of whoever is with you. And I’m talking all the way to the one pushing you in a wheelchair down the dewy lawn of your old folks’ home.
DRESSED TO KILL
Tank tops, on your figure, were truly an implement of war.
POLYGLUT
You spoke six languages. Love wasn’t one of them.
CEYLON, FAREWELL
Sugar: there was never enough in the tea you made.
DOOR NUMBER YOU
I try not to open it often, but when I do, that raw, sweet love for you just waves and shrugs: “Still here.”
CARVED OUT
Your wedding announcement is hidden in my scrapbook, behind a Mount Rushmore postcard.
GREEN MONSTER
I miss the jealous rage you used to stoke in me. It was like rocket fuel.
WE HAD TO BE NUTS
Only with you did I go on those soaring, crazy carnival rides—the ones where crowds gather to stare and shake their heads, muttering, “They gotta be nuts.”
HOSED
Though I’m a fireman, I can’t put you out.
NEVER STOP PEDALING
My memories of our bike rides are beyond fond. It was when we were on foot that things got rough.
LOCKED OUT
Weird, but in all my mental pictures of you, you’re rummaging for your keys.
WONDER WALLS
The book-lined “thinking shed” I built behind the house? It’s for thinking about you.
INDOOR VOICES
Of course I appreciate you trying to teach me how to argue properly. I was just a bad student.
OUTFITTED
You told me if I dressed better, I’d have better friends. Infuriatingly, you were right.
HI, HONEY
Coming home to you never got old. Every day was like a miracle.
IN A BIND
Was I reading too much into those long, tight hugs you used to give me?
PRIORITIES
I always thought our spirited breakfast conversations and rollicking walks around the block more than made up for the rote sex.
THREE WINKS MEANS
I’m sad all the codes we formed are now part of a dead language.
BENDER
I’m too old for the Land of Lust by now, but if I could go back and visit for a weekend, I’d take you with me.
ASTRONOMY
My world revolves around you, but I haven’t seen you in years. I feel like Pluto, the quasi planet, looking for the sun from a trillion miles away.
LOVE BRIGADE
No fewer than forty sixth-grade boys were in love with you. I am proud of my service in that army.
ST. COUCHINGTON’S WEEKEND
Maybe inventing our own holidays so early in the affair meant we were moving too fast.
ACHE
I mourn the fact that never again will I lift and press you against a wall and kiss you. And even if you let me, my old back wouldn’t.
AMOR EMERITUS
Nothing you can do would stop me from loving you. My heart has given you tenure.
PENWOMANSHIP
I love how your handwriting stayed loopy and girlish.
BALLING THINGS UP
Did you find the surprise I left in your sock drawer?
SANDWISH
We were peanut butter and jelly. You were the jelly, all slick and unreliable. I was the peanut butter, stuck on you.
STILL A SOLID EDUCATION
Hey, Reach. I ended up marrying my safety school.
HOLDING ON
Dear Old Love,
I still have your…
• Princeton sweatshirt. Luckily, it was what I wanted in the first place.
• virginity, but I’ve taken amazing care of it.
• scent lodged in my nostrils.
• opposition to the word “enthused.”
• tradition of leaving white Christmas lights up all year.
• prejudice against raisins.
• third-grade report card, somehow.
• gourd-orange wall-paint. It would take too many coats to cover it up.
• loathin’ for words missing their final “g.”
• passport. But congratulations on the destination wedding.
• laundry techniques. You domesticated me. In a good way.
• ability to get depressed about not being invited to parties that you would never go to anyway.
• fearlessness about sending back dishes at restaurants.
• errand-based lifestyle.
• folder for our wedding on my desktop.
• baseball autographed by Dwight Gooden. Wanna have a catch?
• pendant. I wear the hideous thing from time to time.
• fondness for, and lascivious pronunciation of, the word “natch.”
• Tarot cards. I flip them.
• yoga mat. Some quiet nights I sit on it cross-legged and pretend it’s a magic carpet.
• rainbow wristbands. They’ll come back, even if you never do.
• sheet music—all the heavy metal classics, arranged for piano.
• custom-molded mouth guard. You’d rather grind your teeth anyway.
SMOKED OUT
Someone else spent a whole night smoking into my hair. I didn’t wash it for three days, wishing I could hate that about you again.
HOT WATER
I never got as clean, or as dirty, as I did in the shower with you.
ROLE MODELING
You only compared us to doomed couples. Always Romeo and Juliet; never George and Gracie.
I LOVE YOU ALL
I say “I love you” to people all the time now, to make that time I said it to you mean less.
SHY SIDE
In almost every other aspect of your life you were brutal and commanding, yet you were so vulnerable and sweet when you looked up at me for approval during you-know-what.
ME+U
Why couldn’t it have been my initials you carved into that detention-room desk?
STRIDE RITE
You strode with great purpose, but you never had any.
LOW ANGLE
I can still remember how far I have to tilt my head back, and the degree at which I need to fix my gaze to look up at you when we’re standing close to each other.
25% OFF
I di
dn’t love you just for your employee discount, but it was definitely part of the equation.
CHEERING SECTION
You have no idea how hard I root for you.
ORIGINS
I’m embarrassed that my mind works this way, but whenever I see you with your kids, I can’t help but think of how much dang fun it must’ve been getting you pregnant.
TOO LEGIT TO QUIT
I know you worried your bootyliciousness was on the wane, but to me it’s as enduring a force as gravity.
MY ISLAND
Being with you was like being on vacation from the world.
YES, THERE. THERE! LET’S CAMP THERE! YES.
The orgasms were real, but my giddy excitement over all the rugged outdoor activity was fake.
LAST WALTZ
Don’t think I quit violin for you. I quit violin for me.
FAR EAST
I still think you only saw me as an ethnic studies credit.
WALK ON THE MILD SIDE
I’ll never forget you saying you were ready for a “summer of self-destruction” before spending two months holding my hand in city parks.
ETERNAL RECURRENCE
The idea of living life over makes me tired and sad… with the exception of doing us again.
ACTION FIGURED
You were the closest thing to a G.I. Joe doll I ever dated—a brave Marine who was totally fake.
MORE CHEESE!
Eating less dairy was your solution for everything. I had the opposite philosophy.
OUCH
I pretended it hurt more than it did so you could feel like a tough guy.
THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED
I know you wrote better songs when we fought. But aren’t there enough songs already?
D-BAG
I am very sorry I asked you to douche. I’m sure you smelled fantastic. I was young and didn’t know anything.
SEE YOU IN SHUL
So you and I are no more, but the Judaism stuck?
THE PRINGLES OF WISHFUL THINKING
I continue to shop for all your disgusting favorites: instant oatmeal, frozen chicken wings, bacon ranch chips. Just in case.
WASH THAT UPDATE RIGHT OUT OF MY HAIR
The day you changed your Facebook status to “Engaged,” I spent 40 minutes in the shower so my boyfriend wouldn’t hear me crying.
WE-CUP
I can’t bring myself to throw out that ratty old bra of mine you liked so much.
SCREW THAT
I realize I can’t fix you. I’ll leave that to your husband, since he’s the biggest tool I know.
ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
Your not calling me back was like a network exec who cancels a perfect show too soon.
YON SOLITARY HIGHLAND LASS
I still know all the poems I memorized to impress you.
WINTER
One thing I’ll always remember is how we’d clutch each other and laugh when the radiator clanged.
WORKING IT
I still do extra push-ups in your name.
THE OLD CURRENCY
Sexual inflation has radically devalued “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” But really, I just want to hold your hand.
YOU ENCRYPT ME
You’d shake your head when I couldn’t remember passwords. I’ve changed them all to something I can’t forget—your name.
ALL GROWN DOWN
Maturity was our great undoing.
SO LONG, LONG ISLAND
We’ll always have that weekend on Montauk—the boundless sea, the boundless fights about your mother.
HA
I realize now that my patented “tickle torture” was, in fact, torture.
LIKE A MIGHTY OAK
Yours is the only penis I’ve encountered that I describe as having integrity.
CURSE MY HAZEL EYES
I’m glad you finally found the conservative, blue-eyed, Dutch, Christian Reformed girl of your mother’s dreams.
THE ORIGINAL O.D.
I’m going to have to miss your annual overdose this year, as I’ll be up North.
INCUBI, SUCCUBI, BYE-BYE
I dream about you so often I fully expect you to show up for my morphine-addled deathbed hallucinations.
PROTOTYPE
How could you stand me? I’m glad you did, but I was such a jerk and poor dresser back then.
BLOWN
You thought I blew it. I thought you blew it. The truth is, the people we eventually married blew it.
DIGITAL FIX
I want to get together and talk about all the new technologies that have come out since we parted.
NON-TRANSFERABLE
I still owe you a trip to Venice. I’m guessing you won’t collect, though I wish you would.
BUSTED
Sometimes I imagine us making out, then stop because I picture your dad catching us. He’d be so pleased that he still has the power to break us apart.
MY SWEET
I bake now! Me! Who couldn’t toast bread! Give me your address and I’ll send you cookies, cupcakes, brownies…
GREAT EXPECTATIONS
I deserve better, but I don’t want better.
NOW I KNOW MY ABCS
Thank you for saving the tag from my new bra, after I figured out I was a D-cup instead of a C. You kept it in your wallet, like a much-bragged- about picture of the grandkids. It doesn’t make up for the fact that you left me for a girl with As, but still, it was sweet.
BETWEEN EVERYTHING
No one else will sunbathe on the highway median with me.
CARVED IN
Yours is, by far, the deepest and most profound notch on my bedpost.
DO YOU THINK YOU’RE WHAT THEY SAY YOU ARE?
You were the only one who could truly appreciate Jesus Christ Superstar with me.
BETTER MAKE IT FIVE
Just give me three more chances.
MISSING THE GRADE
I checked with the registrar at Harvard—they have no record of anyone with your name ever having enrolled.
YOUR PEE-JAR CAME BETWEEN US
I adored you, but could never have had sex in such a filthy apartment.
TOBOGGAN
Snowfalls, to me, are your body under mine, on a sled, flying.
MFA
For someone with a degree in creative writing, you sure write unoriginal breakup letters.
COMBO
We’ll always have the afternoons by your locker.
FIRST CHAIR
I always liked musicians. I just never imagined my favorite would be an aspiring high school band director.
HOUSEKEEPING
I fear we’re in for a karmic doozy when I think about what we put hotel maids through.
WHEN LIFE WAS A PIZZA PARTY
Grocery shopping without you is like going to Chuck E. Cheese with no kids.
YOUTH’S A STUFF WILL NOT ENDURE
You had me at my ripest. I’m glad somebody did.
Dear Old Love Page 3
