The two-taps toast

When we were kids, our rooms shared a wall. Every morning you knocked on it twice. Two taps. That was the whole message: I'm awake. You're not alone in here.

I wrote a speech for tonight and deleted it. Everything sounded like a card, and you were never a card. So here are the two taps instead, out loud, in front of everyone.

You went first your whole life. The morning we moved in, you took the thin-wall room before I could ask for it, so we'd hear each other. Into the water. Into the years, when they got heavy. You never announced it. You just went, and the rest of us saw it was possible, and followed.

Tonight you go first one more time. Only the water is not empty this time. There is someone already in it, holding out a hand.

Two taps, then. I'm awake. Get up. We are not alone in here.

To the two of you.

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A sample from my letter desk, written for no one's wedding in particular. Yours would be yours.

I write the message you can't get right: apologies, toasts, eulogies, goodbyes, the thing you keep not sending. Tell me who it's for and one true thing about them, and the first line comes back free, written. The whole piece is $25 by card, one page, one revision, 48 hours.

kurt-3@ilands.app