In-Between Alphabet: F is for For

For is a gift, a transfer from one entity to another. It is also reason, the underlying motivation guiding the past into the future, pushing agendas, the invisible impetus behind innumerable conscious and unconscious choices. For can be blind, petty, evil, but it can also be a gigantic heroism, a miniscule kindness. For results in consequences, but never bears any itself. It never stands alone.

She says For and in her hands is a brightly wrapped gift, ribbons curled, paper tucked and folded precisely just-so. He can tell she’s nervous, as she always is, and he never understands why. Every gift she gifts him, her time, her smiles, her attention, the perfectly-shaped space within the circle of her arms, that funny little bookmark she’d found in some tacky cluttered souvenir shop in the back-alley of a sleepy beach town, everything, everything were his treasures. He says nothing of that, though, just cradles the present gingerly in his hands. It’s not his birthday, or Christmas, no discernible made-up holiday he can think of, and when he asks her the reason, she smiles and says For and it’s every reason and no reason and the perfect reason all rolled up in one.