Creative Nonfiction by Andrea Marcusa
The forgotten letter to mail that your beloved picks up and walks to the post office, a tiny task made sweet with the taste of last night’s kiss still resting on his lips.
A set of felt tip pens presented to you because he knows how much you love to write your drafts in aquas, pinks, lavenders, and limes.
The silence you keep instead of ripping into him with sharp words about his unpacked suitcase or dirty dishes. Words that will fester and linger in his heart long after your gripe is forgotten, and clothes and dishes are put away.
Saying “sure” to seeing Casablanca yet again because you like to sit next to him, scroll your phone and rest your head on his shoulder while he watches.
The peace in your quiet home, filled with the two of you busy working, and the invisible tie to him that anchors you to the ground.
Him rubbing the small of your back in exactly the right spot and holding you in his arms so tight that you must unhitch yourself to breathe and then the way his hand is always ready to take yours when it finds its way back to him.
How on Valentine’s Day, you park your self-pity at his hospital room door even though outside, the city blazes with expectation and carefree couples hail taxis and doorbells ring with bouquets of scarlet roses. With you in your winter parka and he in his cotton hospital gown, the bed curtain cocooning you both, the TV news on low, his heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels dance past in yellows, reds, and blues on the nearby monitor. You take out two hearts in pink and silver foils, one dark chocolate the other white, unwrap and divide each and then set them on his bed table beside the covered cup and straw. He picks up a white half and you select a dark. This wasn’t how you’d imagined Valentine’s Day. But beside the bed his Vitals blink HR 80, Temp 99, BP 120/80, Oxygen 95.
Chocolate never tasted so sweet.
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Andrea Marcusa’s writings have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, River Styx, River Teeth, New Flash Fiction Review, Citron Review, and others. She’s received recognition in a range of competitions, including Smokelong, Cleaver, Raleigh Review, New Letters and Southampton Review. She’s a member the faculty at The Writer’s Studio. For more information, visit: andreamarcusa.com or see her on X: @d_marcusa