with a belt tied around the curtain rod above your bathtub. Or I sang it to you the day after. A week later. A month. It doesn't matter. What matters is I sang the phone book. To you.

The day I realized you might love me, I told you about the singing-the-phone-book-thing, singing being something I think about when I think about love. I asked if you knew the old line, how a great singer could sing any song, any lyric, anything written, including the phone book, and it would sound great. It would be great. The singer — usually a singer's singer, like Edith Piaf or Vic Damone — would sing it in a way no one else could. The singer would make the phone book their own, and people would say, "I never heard anything like this, how did you do that? Thank you for sounding like this, for singing this way, for sounding like this and singing this way in my lifetime."

And you liked it when I told you this. You said you wanted to hear me sing the phone book, sing it to you, sing it when you would least expect. Sing it so you could hear my voice, hear me. You didn't know if it would be great, my singing, you didn't care if it would suck. You wanted to hear me sing the phone book to you. Someday.

I told you I would surprise you, I would sing it to you someday, it could be a distraction. The kind you were afraid you'd run out of. While I was telling you this, the light came to the notch where your neck met your collarbone, and I realized I might love you, too. Or I realized it the day after. A week later. A month. It doesn't matter. What matters is I realized I might love you, and I would sing the phone book to you someday.

You told me you imagined the phone book would be tricky to sing, trickier than "The Star-Spangled Banner" or that song that goes I've been to paradise but I've never been to me, because the phone book is "all alphabetized and shit," all those companies putting all those A's in front of their names to compete for your attention, compete for your call. Singing words that weren't words, words that began with four or five A's in a row, had to be hard, you said.

I told you I would practice, I would work on it, I would get that A thing down. And I practiced, I got the A thing down. It didn't matter if I got it down, if I sucked at singing the phone book, or if I sang it great. What mattered was you wanted me to sing the phone book to you, you wanted to hear my voice, to hear me, and I was sure I would sing it to you soon.

Whether I sang the phone book to you soon, or soon enough, is a time-and-space question I'm not sure I can answer. And I don't know if I suck or don't suck at singing it. It doesn't matter. What matters, in a moment when I uncharacteristically feel this side of certain, is every letter A in every word of every lyric of every song I've sung since you died is a letter A I sang for you, to you, and, in a time-and-space thing I do feel sure about, with you. What matters is the harmony: love, and loved, and will love.

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