My Forever Love Note to My Wife

I like to believe I've left my own personal love note on the Greatest Monument Ever Built For Love (the Taj Mahal). I didn't scratch it into the marble as a discouraging number of people have. I didn't leave any paper or film behind. I only left fingerprints on various sections as I traced the semi-precious inlaid stones, trying to study their borders.

When I walked around the mausoleum, where they don't let you take pictures, a little man came up to me. There were several other dressed like him, all in a simple off-white sherwani, unadorned but pressed. They showed people around, explaining the inlay process, telling little facts and legends about the crypt, and expecting very modest tips in return.

The little man came up and started explaining all the things I'd heard and read a hundred times before. I wanted to tell him to go away and let me look in peace, to let me lean against the back wall and take in the scene I will likely never see again, but before I started to say it, he asked me my name. I told him.

"Maaaaaaaarrrrrrrruukiiiiisssshhhhhh" he almost sang the name. It didn't echo in the chamber as much as it became amplified, extended, and faded slowly, after about twenty seconds. You could almost see where the sound was coming from and where it was going next.

"What's the name of your special lady?" I told him.

He sang K's name in the same drawn out, deep voice, and the effect may have been more profound. The short vowels didn't sound short... they sounded round and open, unapologetic, let's say, and as they moved around I wondered if maybe she could hear them back at home.

So I wonder if, in theory, those sounds could be still there, fading away far more than any machine could ever pick them up, but still alive and mingling with millions of vibrations from the calls of millions of lovers, and mixed in with the occasional "Allahu Akbar", set to last forever.

In theory, if I'm right, and the same could be said for my naughty grade school friends who would whisper cuss words at the dome of the capital building in Texas, to see if the person on the other side could hear the whisper. Those are no doubt floating around too. Maybe K and I need to visit the capital and tell each other repeatedly, in whispers, how much we love each other, while walking all around the circle. Maybe we can class the joint up a bit.