January 27, 2017

Dear James,

I have much to tell you, my beloved. I know many painful moments have passed since our sad separation. But today I find that nothing can please the voices of my heart more than the kind attention of yours.

I have just returned from the most remarkable of events in our dear capital. You must have received news of it. There were so many of us! And so much marching! My feet are pained, but my spirit is mended and alight with passion! I never knew until that first step how much my soul pined for commiseration and how lost I have long felt. The friendships I was gifted that day and my “vulva la resistance” sign are now among my most treasured keepsakes. I will forever guard my vulva sign as surely as I guard your mother’s fine emerald brooch.

If the marching prevails for four years, Abigail says I am wise to procure New Balance or Adidas cloudfoam. I pray it does continue. At present I live very near to an outlet. The New Balances so well form to my high arches. And we are surely not in want of fear or fury! Did you know Mr. Trump has now codes to kill peoples with tiny pieces of science? And he can do it with even tinier hands? And that he has long been copulating with the President of the Russian Empire and has moreover replaced the moldings along the Grand Staircase?

Oh! So much fury! And only so many signs!

In lieu of LuLaRoe I wear simple yoga pants today and am knitting the pussycat bonnets we will need for this long march towards equality and less grabbing.

And I think of you, my beloved. Still I think of you. Sometimes I think of Gronk, but almost always it is you. Is it not remarkable how such darkness can permit us to see the most distant lights of our lives, like stars in the night sky? Why did we ever part? I am almost at a loss to recall—though I do recall you speaking with Sharon without my knowing.

I pray that there is virtue in our parting. I have blossomed in our long absence, and perhaps you may still be there to tend to me as I, now stronger, may again tend to you. I am not prepared to forever surrender the affection and goodness that may you still bring to me.

I suppose that is for God to determine.

Your loving,

Dolley Madison

p.s. I am now a registered Muslim.