"The box of letters fell from the top shelf of the closet where I'd placed it after the move when Sam's death was so new that whole days would be lost reading the letters again. Sam could make me laugh, stop the thought-locomotive that tore through me and make me calm inside, make it easy just to rest, to smile. The top letter was the one from our early meeting. The envelope looked ragged, a little smudged but so white the light reverberated off of it. Sam's handwriting on the front knocked the wind out of my lungs but as my fingers birdbeaked down into the envelope and brought out the white notebook page, I felt my face widen into a grin. Sam wrote like a lighthearted boy. His words spare but lively. Lady A, Saw you just yesterday, already I can't stop thinking about things you said He delighted in being that very boy and it came through each line and his words stung now less than they pleased me. To have known such a boy. Imagine. I keep thinking of us there, checking out that white sand, feeling like we're on the moon. Of course, the photographs--his favorites, part of the treasure he brought along were the bike, his knee touching the track round a curve in a dip so deep I thought it was a crash photographed moments before it occured. Something felt like watching my parents argue, the signing of their rage so emphatic but the air that whooshed by their fingers almost a silent film of what their voices would do were they to engage them. The speed caught in that photo was no measure. Sam's faraway face said as much when he spoke of it and what could I do but beam back? I've never been to the moon, A, but I think I'm starting to know how it might feel. From Season of White Flies