Happy 16th to you too...

So there is no way I can live up to your amazingness (because you stole my poem amongst other things.) I thought I should try at least and use black and white photos to help.

It took me a long long time to find a picture that managed to get the feeling of how you make me laugh. Do not take offense, you do not look like a penguin. Even in a tux.

Then I thought there should be flowers. There should always be flowers. It is, however, damn difficult to rival the beautiful Giles Norman lily, so I'm not going to. I'm going to take a leaf out of your own anniversary book and have a picture of a flower that means something to us. So (though you had a beautiful picture of this flower as well) below is a picture of the kind of gladiolus I bought you. It was worth talking to silence for 20 minutes on the offchance you could hear me and well worth carrying really BIG flowers on the G-train at 3 a.m.

This next picture is one that I hope shows how you make me feel a lot:

Then of course, the inevitable picture that depicts unconditional love:

I don't even know what to say now, I say a lot of it a lot. Here again it should be said though, so I love you, I miss you like crazy, I'm ridiculously glad that we're still together through ALL of it. I've been trying to find a poem to say things that I can't (one you haven't stolen, you see). In deference to your Irish and preferences the first verses:

Leaba Shioda

Do chóireoinn leaba duit

i Leaba Shíoda

sa bhféar ard

faoi iomrascáil na gcrann

is bheadh do chraiceann ann

mar shíoda ar shioda

sa doircheacht

am lonnaithe na leamhan.

Labysheedy (The Silken Bed)

I'd make a bed for you
in Labysheedy
in the tall grass
under the wrestling trees
where your skin
would be silk upon silk
in the darkness
when the moths are coming down.

Anyway, I love you.

Yours, etc.


K