I Didn't Know Any Better.

Next time I'll call and whisper sweet nothings, talking about nothing in particular, anything to keep a conversation going so you can go to bed thinking, oh what a nice man he is. And I can go to bed half conscious thinking, that phone call is gonna cost me quite a bit of good money.

I am a little in love, but not enough to do crazy things like go meet her up in her office in the middle of an afternoon with a picnic basket filled to the brim with lamb sandwiches so we could go find ourselves a bench in a park to eat lunch and talk talk talk until the sky comes down on us in a shower of rain so we can run to the car, and I can hold her hand while balancing the picnic basket in the other thinking, maybe we should run straight to Tok Kadhi's office so he can get us married right away. But you've got your children to think of and I've got nothing to think about except maybe, I shouldn't be thinking about being in love with you all that much since we've only known each other less than a month.

Experience has taught me to be careful about falling in love with someone like you. I don't know what has gotten into me but ever since I decided to become a land person full-time, I've been going out with single mothers like you more often than I care to count the number of times I cook these days. It doesn't bother me at all but this whole single mother thing is kinda new to me that I am not quite sure how to deal with it. Maybe I am still hurt by the last single mother I went out with and wanted so much to marry only to be told in the end over the phone that we had better stop seeing each other because I could be a child born out of wedlock.

And now you came along. Deep down inside, I want to marry you right away. I am even willing to marry you first and hope that maybe love will find its way to bloom when we are together as legal as my driver's licence. At this age, I don't think it is proper for us to be going out on a date, sitting for hours at a restaurant talking in whispers as if we are selling something illegal to one another. I am not comfortable, being at this age, to be seen in public with a woman who is clearly not my missus. It's okay for young people to do this. In fact I find it cute. But for middle-age people like us, I find it obscene. And dirty.

Maybe I should just call you and say: 'Marry me.'