Scott, I’m in love with your wife

Dear Scott,

As anyone who knows me can tell you, you are by far my favorite author. You have held this position since I first discovered your writing my sophomore year of high school and retained it year after year as I’ve delved deeper and deeper into your work.

Well, Scott, I have to apologize and tell you in point of fact that I’m in love with her wife, Zelda. Luckily for you, (and for the both of us), she has been dead now for some 66 years. Alas, it is thus that I can assure you I won’t make a play for her, but if I had been of your generation and somehow managed to crawl into the outskirts of your circle somewhere along the way, I don’t think I could’ve made such a promise.

As you know, over the years she has been unfairly labeled as “crazy,”  with all the stereotypes that go along with it. Depending on who you listen to, either you ruined her in any number of ways, or she ruined you, or you both saved each other, or any other combination of the above possibilities. Like most of the people making such pronouncements, I wasn’t there, but, unlike them I will leave my opinion on the doorstep, unformed, eyes ready to see any wonder that may pass by.

What I can tell you, however, is that I’m in love with her. I am in love with her style, with her passion, with her mind and the strange and wonderful connections she could make with the written word. In some ways it was similar to your own and, Scott, let me tell you, I love the beauty of your prose and read it over and over again – she meanwhile has such imagery that does not always make sense, but which always makes me smile and laugh and think what it would be like to have a correspondence with her, let alone a real conversation.

I mean no harm, good sir, but what I wouldn’t give to dance with her thoughts under a Paris moon, drunk at four in the morning.

Please forgive me for the designs I have on your wife, but I cannot help myself. I have never met anyone like her. I thought I did once, but I believe now she was nothing more than a dream.

Sincerely,

your friend and admirer,

Gregory T. Janetka