Vows (Meghan)

Vows

I thought I knew what I wanted to say about the day

I say “I do” to you, and I sat there smugly on a bar stool

while patrons chattered around us and you asked what

our vows should be: declaration, proclamation, or promise?

I said pledge and planned to pledge my life to yours,

to commit to being your ballast and beam in exchange for the same.

I said it had to be clear that this was for year after year after year,

that I would be here, and you could rest in knowing that

my love is all-weather and all-terrain, and again I hoped

to hear you say something like the same.

But you said, “I think there should always be a degree of uncertainty.”

That’s right--you said I should never feel safe and never rest because

on any given day, I might come home and find you gone, and there will

be no explanation, and if there is, it needn’t be good, because this is a

game of pleaser and pleased, and when the pleaser falters, all bets

are off, which is why we shouldn’t place bets in the first place.

Never gamble what you feel you can’t afford to lose.

You said you love me, for now--that’s obvious--but life is long,

and someday we may look back and see this as nothing more

than a placeholder.  I saw you looking at my arms like taut strings,

wound to receive you but snappable with ease for a strong man.

Ok, you didn’t say much of that really.  You said,

“I think there should always be a degree of uncertainty,”

and my eyes went blurry until you muttered, “Listen,”

and spoke fresh words to replace the ones I’d dreamed into

existence in the panic of a promise assumed, undone.

You really spoke of couples who are complacent,

passing ships in swollen bodies who forget even the nicety

of a kiss hello.  You said you never wanted to stop being better

for me.  Better. for. me. Words I could hear but barely believe.

And to pledge your life to me would mean that the promise,

not the living marriage, meant the most, and a promise

without action is just a faded dream of syllables

uttered under a tree when everything was hopeful.

You said you never want to be the man who sits on a bar stool,

like this one, carousing with his friends over the stupid things

wives do, the stupid things I might do, like a superior sultan

enduring the marathon of marriage to a bawling ball and chain.

Well then, I thought to ask, what do you want to be?

“I want to be that scrawny old man with white hair and wrinkled face,

brushing the white hair away from your wrinkled face,

having shared three lives: yours, mine, and ours,

because we never forgot to listen and respond.”

“I think there should always be a degree of uncertainty.”

I think you should say it differently, but together we will find

the combination.  We’ll refine this condemnation of promises

and pledges into words which only will approximate

this act of love, this active love, we mean to water and feed.

I saw you looking at my arms like velvet cloth,

supremely soft but sewn with iron thread.

Outline (Meghan)

Outline

We’d been kissing in the churchyard, on the bridge,

but our shadows on the park grass just after twilight--

yours a little taller but broader, mine morphing with the movement of my hair,

arms falling in natural extension to resolve in the hand of the other—

gave minds time to photograph the moment so I could write it later

to remind you how you looked to me in silhouette,

the painting of your solid hand immaterial on the lawn, projected

 by lamplight (or tell me, was there a moon?).

I was afraid of you, of course; we looked too well-matched in grass

to falter, but your touch was of a handsome stranger

etching the night into memory in case all failures were former—

in case night stretched into night stretched into night.

I moved away to see the shapes change,

You pulled me close to see them meld.

I don’t remember shadows after that—

Just you whispering in me (or in my ear—do you remember?)

the soft  laughter of nearby terrace diners, perhaps gathering to the spectacle

of alchemy that will be love.

Mouth (Meghan)

Mouth

If tongues were braver than brains,

mine would telegraph the words that boil in the stem

with clicking code on the backs of my teeth,

and you would smile because the sounds

are souls made meat for deglutition.

I’d say the things that let you know I know you,

(that I swallowed you one night while you slept,

and like Jonah, you’ve been living here inside

me, both quiet and content).

But something stops at synapse.

I languish, try to smile.

Let eyebrows and irises perfume the air

with all that’s steaming, this whistling tea kettle

between these ears where you are tucking my hair.

So know that if I could, I’d telescope

my way into your throat, my dragging feet

a delicacy, something savory to say

 I’ve lived in you, too,

since I met you, all along.

At Home (Meghan)

At Home

She’ll be there, still curled in the green chair,

braless and blonde, her messy hair falling around her face,

her eyes affixed, amused, to words on her lap.

She might have read them faster, but she likes

to let them settle in her brain, to wonder what might be true

if these new words are also true.  The world is burning.

And when she smiles you want to know if her heart pitched

when she heard the garage door, if she pictured your face

at the top of the stairs and wanted your warm hands

anywhere, just anywhere near her,

but you already know because you usually do.

She says she hates you reading her mind, but you know

that’s a lie because she smiles when she says it:

The world is burning and she loves knowing she’s known.

Her feet are cold. Arms around her, you’ve felt your own heat

sink to her last toe and thrilled to do it again and again.

She’ll be there and she’ll smile at you and that old green chair

won’t look so ugly anymore, even as you wonder how long

it takes to read seven stories if you haven’t got all day.

She calls on God in gasps sometimes.  You laugh,

but by God, isn’t this something?