Dear Miss Acacia,
The day I met you, you stole my heart.
And I suppose, I suppose I've been searching for it—searching for you—ever since. What I never expected was to find you and give you more of me.
Madeleine always warned me: You must never fall in love.
And I never did. Because falling, that overrated word to describe the process of beginning to love someone, could not hold a candle to how I felt about you. Falling is an action, something that one does.
I did not fall in love with you. I did not fall in love with you because I had always loved you. And I just didn't know it until I saw you that day.
Oh, I've had an epiphany.
What if nobody ever falls in love? Perhaps we all tread this earth with a set of personality traits and physical appearances that suits us and that we love, and when we meet the person who has them, we are already in love with them.
The falling part comes later, when you realize you love them.
If that is the case, Miss Acacia, I have always loved you. Traveling across Europe, I have never met anyone who I have loved. How I feel when I am with you, I have never felt that way before. I will never feel that way again.
Oh, Miss Acacia, do you remember the day we met? Because I certainly do.
You were wearing a plum purple dress and knee-high red socks speckled with snowflakes, and you were spinning the crank on a street organ and singing in the highest, purest, most innocent voice I had ever heard.
And when I joined your song, our two voices felt right.
Do you remember when you asked me, My, what's that odd pitter-patter?
I didn't tell you about my madly beating cuckoo-clock heart. The rain, I said. Do you like the rain? You said you liked the sound.
Do you hear the sound of the rain, Miss Acacia, my love? Do you like it?
It's my heart again. My broken, patchwork, cuckoo-clock heart, that's been fooled with and handled roughly so many times. My foolish, madly-in-love-with-you, cuckoo-clock heart that still can't help itself. Even with gears and cogs springing from my chest, my cuckoo-clock heart still cannot keep from beating for you.
Oh, what a fool love has made of me.
Love,
Jack
P.S. If I had never met you, I would never have died.
P.S.S. You are probably reading this right now, tears falling from you eyes. Just know: I don't care.
P.S.S.S. Darling, it isn't your fault. I have always known you would be the death of me.
Please forgive the mistakes. I just had to write this.