Wifely

You should not be allowed to sleep without me. Even your perfectly warm bed and curtained room should cease without me.

I should always be engaged in the study of your dozing. Your autonomous activities should always be subject to my love.

You sit at your desk and doodle. I should be moping in the next room.

Surely you remember the broken faucet. Surely you remember the azure porch.

I have been guilty of idiocy -- you understand that I get confused and fantasize that the unknown stubble will make sense of all the uselessness, of the chance of our tiny biology.

Last night: my ultimate escape. And my ultimate reality. Guilty: I wanted you to make me disappear even more.

* * *

Always: the Hawaiian resort, the wet apartment, and the small doors. Tonight I'll revisit the sandy place of volcanoes and the house with unlocking doors, the glass bathroom and tiny-doored high school.

All these phantasms: a camera that does not work against the purple peaks, a car that barely manages the snowy incline, a video game of swampy adventure.

* * *

I cannot love you because I cannot commit to anything.

Love is actually . . . a desperate necessity? I learned early that nothing would love me, and I developed defenses.

* * *

You have loved me throughout because you are human. You are capable of love and a variety of mischiefs.

* * *

Magic times: a favorite tree and a complete cessation of time, which I did not understand and feared. Weak I was; enamored; wifely; and disappeared even as I became. It is frightening to experience anything important.

* * *

I love you.