Thursday, 19 February 2015

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Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters

"I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, 
as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. 
 I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence 
and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.
 I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints 
love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe
 of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. 
I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning
 buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, 
and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it.
I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, 
and as a certain person loves to wear dagger proof tunics, and as a dagger 
proof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain 
employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, 
watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar,
 and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly 
realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer 
loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, 
and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves 
a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter 
on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone 
else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, 
even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and 
reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments 
are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping 
into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken 
and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.
I will love you until every fire is extinguised and until every home is rebuilt 
from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every 
criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love until M. hates snakes 
and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy 
of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until 
the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple
 hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple 
hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter 
how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, 
and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, 
and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning 
hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage 
of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars 
that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you 
as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where we once 
we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, 
between our lips and fingers respectively.
I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from 
slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your
 memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, 
and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. 
I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where 
you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding 
where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, 
and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter 
what happens to me as I discover this, and now matter how I am discovered 
after what happens to me as I am discovering this." 



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