He started the letter with Dear. It was hard to get past that part. Oh, it’s all there in his belly but for some reason when reaching that point the pencil just stops and thinks. Dear. Dear. Dear. Dear. He has walls all around him, separating him, the point of comfort and safety intact. It was wallpapered in. He was too.

The small shelves in the room that hold his work, his hobby, are lighted with purpose and thoughtfulness and meaning, but to translate that into a written letter to her is halting. It swells the limits of the room. He just can’t get past the image of himself sitting alone at his bench pasting stamps, working on miniscule toy soldiers, painting the tiny details into nothing with his eyes squinting, focusing, even fooling himself, and all with her so close across the hall, so close he can feel the thoughts of that stubborn princess coming the whole way over, up to the edge and straight through the plaid wallpaper of his small study. He can’t talk to her, his estranged wife. The crust of years has hardened around them. So he’s resolved to just sit there and communicate to her in the way he was doing before, his way, with purpose and thoughtfulness and meaning and she’ll never get it. She’ll never get the little soldiers he’s completed, how they’re organized and colored like the small candied hearts with a chalky taste, the ones sold in big bags near Valentine’s Day, cheap and plentiful, his soldiers of love, pan-time, pan-world, set up, arranged, rearranged, in order.

There’s one of a Kieber Pass Redcoat who’s fitted with the red-letter phrases of Valentine wishes, through the heart, clutching his chest saying YES. KISS ME. HAVE ME. WILL YOU. SWEETIE. OH MY. WHEN, just to get started. He has a Gurkha with kukri readied in front of a Nicaraguan stamp (used); he says WON’T YOU. Two German engineers are dancing with mines and shovels, but she never notices that. She never sees the Cossack riding out of the pasted Mongolian hills with a furling, striped, red air balloon rising as his sun. PLEASE. CALL ME. And not to mention the Austrian, his rifle on his shoulder, who is walking calm and strong with a calling: desire in his letter to her, located in an oversized card mounted on his study wall, shelved in countless rows, countless columns of men as words to a lover gone distant, a huge Valentine’s Day card that’s been stored up over time, covering all history and all places through this world. HOPELESS. I’M YOURS. BE MINE. COME ON. He could charge right on through these thin rock sheet walls tearing the paper and cracking the chair molding and he could have dust fly off his bruised shoulder, a cloud of whirling paper scraps, cuts, hot glue, sawdust, and pennies and with that he might be able to catch her off guard just once. TAKE ME. WHY NOT. His hobby. Romans, Praetorians, Zulu, Free French, Eighth Army, a Warsaw Pact. A long, long letter in his 1/72 scale, 360 degrees in full view 3D, available all day, all night, every year.