My Only Darling B—

You can’t imagine how a woman of substance has changed this ranch and all your boys, me included. Our Dulce. Billy brought her, thinking she was his, but all your sons have found reasons to cherish her: soft voice, sharp eye, curves in certain light, each one a feature of you that they must be reminiscing. They think their affection is genuine, but they’ve fallen in love with their mother, or parts of you. Merciful God, I’m sorry, B! I should never have dragged you to a pitiless frontier expecting shelter from this omniscient sky. A man in love has given away half his brain and all of his decency!  When I watch the boys looking at Dulce, I understand where I went wrong. I was defeated by your eyes. Yes, I mean your ass. There, I’ve made you laugh. Since I saw you at that table alone in the café near your school, with my bag of blueprints for building a future far from home and nothing but bankruptcies behind me, any confidence I needed I took from those eyes of yours that did me in. Again, I mean that ass. You ridiculed my pickup line without mercy. But when I called your face expressive, I meant it as a warning that I could tell you would follow me anywhere I wandered to. I should have left you sheltered in a town full of friends, married to whoever you wanted. You could have had anyone, been anyone, instead of disintegrating here on acres of powdered grief, raising boys like livestock, and being The Colonel’s wife. I wish you were here to see her, B—. The boys will have a hard time keeping her from me. I see it in her eyes.

Love, Your Colonel.

Original Copyright © March 13, 2007
Revised Copyright © March 13, 2026