Oh John, that was special. The attention you paid to me, the manicures, the photographers, how you made sure they caught my good side…it was as if you had never been gone.

I’ll be honest. Since you left last year it’s been lonely. Real lonely. Things don’t feel the same. Sure, the creepy bozos that you took so much pride in cultivating are still around, doing their hackneyed best to poetically express their ultimately unrequited love for me. Ick. As you know, John, you were the only one all this time. Just you.

And in case the past had been romanticized in my mind (I am of course a pretty old gal), when I saw you today I knew that what we had all those years was real.

Your caress, your firm but soothing hand as they moved over my bricks, electrifying me in the process. The way you hugged my pole in Section 208–your favorite, I’ll always remember, ever since you so fiercely defended my honor to those people who said I was an old nag. It was if you were never gone, my love. You had the power to stop time today, and made me feel like you did the first time you and I met, over 25 years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. You showed up to work on your first day and dinged Randy Martz’ car while getting out of yours, and pretended that nobody saw it. Of course I saw it. You were such an earnest boy back then. A child, practically.

Of course I was showing my age, becoming self-conscious of my wrinkles, and in no way expected to catch the admiring eyes of someone as virile as yourself. The way you looked at me…well it was a look that I had not seen in years, not since my first paramour, PK Wrigley, nearly a half-a-century earlier. And true enough the next twenty-five years were some of the most joyous I have ever had.

I was very bitter when you left, John–I’ll be honest. But I knew when I saw you today that, while our affair will never again reach the fire that it had in the past, that I am never far from your thoughts and that’s good enough for me. Besides, you tagged me so good today, I won’t need to get any for a while. So thanks.

Happy New Year, lover.

Miss Wrigley