a sweet potato took me

...to a 40-year-old love letter last night.
Sweet potato
Kept it too long. Shriveled scabby skin. So I peel it, down deep. Pale flesh inside, not orange. Is it OK to eat?

Search engine
Yields ag-school info. Found a yam variety named "Vardaman". Whoa.

English major
Went to my shelf, retrieved Faulkner. Yep. Vardaman character in As I Lay Dying.

The letter
Tucked inside the front cover.
From a lover, posted 40 years ago this week.
He's in New Haven, then; I'm in Austin.

Six months earlier I'd met my future husband, for better, for worse, in Austin.

Jim's letter spoke passionately of life and death, meaning and purpose--concerns felt keenly by brilliant youth. He sensed I'd said goodbye.

He wrote, "Your letter read like a tickertape from a news service as I just read it again for the tenth time--not so warm & human and loving as it was the first several times. It seemed very distant & cold this time--maybe that's me..."

Oh no, dear boy. It wasn't you.

It was I, delivering what you sensed. Distancing myself. Hedging my bet. Hoping the new boy would be the man in my life. He was, and now he's passed away.

Wonder what I wrote you then. Wonder where you are now.