Morning Grief

Even nine years after his death, I wake early with him on my mind. Larry, my husband, was murdered on August 27th, 1999, and I can't seem to move forward even though sufficient time has passed and our eighteen years together are now only a memory.
With a mug of warm coffee at my right hand, I reach for my pen and legal pad. Writing seems to bring him back for a while. He lives again on these pages, and I am in control of how long he stays. We are young and falling in love. He's eight years older than I am, but that makes no difference to me. I like older men.
His green eyes turn my heart to mush. The chemistry between us is electric, and I know that this man is the one I'll love until I die. He's a truckdriver, and I am a college student in my third year of studying to be an English teacher. Larry writes poems to me on those little white pads businesses hand out to their customers. This latest one advertises " Laney Tank Lines, Cheraw, South Carolina." His handwriting is neat for a man, the letters carefully and consciously written in blue ink. A truck driver who writes poetry. Who would have thought that the stereotypical hard-driving, coffee-drinking, 10-4 good buddy would also have feelings so deep he would put them on paper for me? But , this man does, and I am intrigued. Larry is not typical---just my type.
In the poem, he says he's waiting to be loaded in Wilmington, NC and that all he's thinking of is my long black hair in his face when we make love. He calls me " Cool" and says he can't sleep without my head in the crook of his left shoulder, my breath warm on his heart.
I am wracked with grief at the memory. While he lies cold in a grave seven miles away, I sit here at this kitchen table and waste my life by looking backwards. Lot's wife, the one who craves what she has left behind.
Outside the window, the morning sun stretches through magnolia leaves and beckons me to begin another day of forgetting...

( to be continued......}