A Letter

         When we first met, we couldn’t stand each other.  Do you remember that?  You hated me because I was the corporate executive, everything you and your little band of protestors despised in the world.  And I hated you, as deceived as I was by my superiors’ talk of uncontained rabble.
         I don’t remember what you said to me that day, but I do remember what I said to you.  I said things that I have regretted my entire life, things that no one should ever be made to listen to.  I said things that I would give five years of my life to never have said.
         Why wasn’t that the end of it?  If you and I were rational people, it would have been, but we both kept thinking.  After a week, it occurred to me that you might be right, and I had to see you again.  There isn’t a day of my life I have not been thankful you missed your flight, and that I found you in the airport.
         I guess you weren’t as impressed by my arguments as I was of yours, and I guess I deserved that.  But at least I knew your name.
         I don’t know if I ever told you how I found you again.  It took me three weeks, but I found you in the police records.  Can you imagine that?  As responsible a woman as you have become, and I saw you listed under Berkeley protestor arrests.
         The VP was getting a little unhappy with me, but after what you said, I just couldn’t care about that anymore.  I couldn’t really care about anything.
         You were a little kinder to me, when I showed up on your doorstep.  What you must have thought at that moment I wonder to this day.  But there I was, in a wrinkled suit, with a toothbrush in my pocket, and fifty bucks in my wallet.
         I stayed in a hotel and came to your house every day that week.  Do you remember when you turned on the sprinklers on me?  But I couldn’t leave, and I think you understood.
         After a while you let me in.  I asked to take you out to dinner, and you threw me out on the porch.  But the next day you said yes, didn’t you?
         Two months later I had been fired, my landlord had evicted me from my suite, and we were getting married.  I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life.
         Looking back on that, I feel wrong to throw it all away.  I feel – damn it, if I could actually write how I feel I would have gotten to the point long before now.  I just – maybe we didn’t give it a good enough try?  Maybe, maybe if love is strong enough it doesn’t matter that we argue.  Maybe it doesn’t matter that we don’t think the same way, or act alike.  Maybe if we are just happy to love each other, then that is enough.  What we had was love, wasn’t it?
         I don’t know.  I don’t really know anything since you moved out.  Maybe love isn’t enough.  Maybe what we had is all we’ll ever have.  Maybe if we tried it all again, it wouldn’t work out the second time either.  But I think I’d enjoy trying.
         Maybe, just maybe, you would too.