Anniversary

I’ve been married for 26 years today. We’ve been together almost 30 years. it was all born of a falling-in-love of unmatched ferocity and passion. We ran at each other at full speed and have been sorting out the collision ever since. I never dreamed I could know so much and so little. Life has taken me apart and put me back together so many times over the years that now I know the pieces just don’t matter.

When we got together, I had literally nothing, and she was hardly any better off. There was a carrot and a heel of home-made bread in my refrigerator. She climbed the academic ladder to full professor, and we bought a house in the country. I became an artist of every description except accomplished. She quit to follow me to New Mexico. The house and salary were gone, and we had almost nothing again.

We’ve seen more landscape go by the car windows than most people ever know. We’ve walked together in London and San Francisco, Paris and Berlin, Vienna and Des Moines, on mountaintops in Colorado and dusty cobblestone streets of old Mexico.

I wish I could say I never screamed or touched her in anger. I wish I could say I never made her sob her heart out. I wish I could say I’ve laid a carpet of rose petals in front of her bare feet every step of the way.

It was nine below zero last night when I came home after midnight, my boots squeaking on the snow. She’d left me a note not to wake her when I came back, that she was just fine. I built up the fire and wrapped up a bracelet I’d bought earlier that day. When I climbed into bed in the darkness, her body was like hot pion coala

[cross-posted at FarrFeed today]