I’ve lasted three days longer now than marriage number two,
a week longer than my number one. But the twenty-three years you
shared with your previous darling—I have a ways to go. Still,
we have to account for the way time compresses, distills.
We’ve been together barely 19 percent of your life,
now, 20 percent of mine. All that wake behind us, that strife,
it’s as if we’re wading through peanut butter. Neither of us
keeps souvenirs, other than our children, but every time you touch
my elbow, the inside of my wrist, I think of the difference. Not
think. The undertow of the past sounds a tone against that spot
like a temple bell under my skin. We’re never entirely alone.
Let me put it this way: suppose we go to the matinee, our known
life left out there in the sun. We’re ready to fling ourselves into
the plot, shed a few tears, which is the fun of it. Something new.
Then we’re stunned by the inside light, made of all our infinite
remembered people and places, reshuffled to form this exquisite,
this strange tale. Sure, it makes us sad, or sorry, but the edifice
itself is pure bliss: all of us here, we’re all caught up in the kiss.