Hey you - you who are too good to me,
An old friend since first grade called me the night before I married you and he asked me if I was sure, really sure. Rie, are you sure you know what you're doing?
A former boyfriend came into the bridal room moments before I walked the aisle to you and asked me if I was sure I wasn't making a mistake. Rie, are you sure this isn't a mistake?
Neither knew you. Neither had met you. They only knew time had been short.
But if they had known then what my heart knew -
that to all the boys before I had been replaceable -
- until you.
If they had known that when I was fifteen, someone - an adult - had looked at my boyfriend and said these words to him - I guess love really is blind - about me.
And that I had carried those words around for years and let them take me places I should never have gone and that they often marked my path and haunted my mind - until you.
Only I knew that on the night I had tried to tell you some things I didn't think I had the nerve to say that you had fallen asleep listening - because you just didn't care, it just didn't matter. That you had said now and to come are the only moments.
Honey, my feet hurt in those eighty dollar shoes and you had seen me on our wedding day and our honeymoon had been cancelled and one of the candles wouldn't stay lit. Remember?
We laughed through the prayer and got Allan tickled and he forgot the words to the ceremony. Remember?
You went through the first carwash you could find and washed off the Just Married and I got mad at you and I lost the key to the cabin and you got mad at me. Remember?
August 6 twenty three years later just came and went again and I forgot - again - just like last year and the year before. You say it first every year and pardon and forgive every year.
It's 12:42 a.m. on August 12 and I'm saying it first -
I love you.
and
Happy 24th.
I said it first. A little early - okay, a year early - but still first.
Remember that, Okay?
