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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