Up at my Grandma’s for the holiday break, she asked about my studies, other things, said she wondered what it was I had been busy scrawling away at. “Oh just a letter…to a friend.”
“Is that your girl…you still seeing that girl…the one from high school?”
I was surprised she remembered. I guess it was all pretty transparent.
She got up and told me to go on with what I was doing, she’d be right back. She returned holding a little wood box. She opened the clasp and leafed through some buttons, and things and pulled out an old yellowed letter folded up in a square. It looked like a dried red flower was attached with a clip. Uncreased, she read it out loud:
“Oh sweet Elipha I think of you dear
I yearn for your face in the light
An end to the darkness spreading the land
Your laughter with mirth and delight.”
“I fancy that you might fancy me….”
A catch came into her voice, a tear at the corner of her eye. The silence felt strange, so I said I had no idea Grandpa was such a romantic old fool. “A poet no less!”
“Oh, no, goodness no, this was just a boy that loved me once.” She folded it back into a square and delicately clipped the flower back on top. It was a poppy I found out later, a red one, she had picked years ago in a field when she was young.
52|250 A Year of Flash 
Oh, that was absolutely lovely. It’s always shocking when we find out our parents (or grandparents) were real people once, with lives that had nothing to do with what we know about them. What a beautiful little vignette.