There you go.
You have to tell that story.
I'm falling over laughing
and you have to tell that story next.
It's not enough that I love you,
or need you,
or make use of you regularly.
You have to entertain me,
regale me with antics of past mischief,
blind me useless with tears of hysterics,
make me wonder how you got this way,
this especially funny way,
in your lifetime of Catholic masses and stiff business suits.
I can't compete, and you know it,
but it is my insight
(or relentless pondering for insight)
that keeps you interested.
And if it wasn't enough that we loved each other before we met,
or that we married quickly on a rainy Portland night,
but that we turned ourselves into a complexity of counterparts that nothing could separate.
And it never mattered
when we had money or when we didn't.
Three kids (and no water) in a mountain snowstorm,
and the springtime building of a quarter acre garden from nothing.
Butchering chickens,
crying over ducks,
canning wild fruit,
and swimming in the creek.
You thought it would,
but it never broke us when one child left.
We slipped into a tighter weave,
as the other two flourished.
I grew it.
You cooked it.
We ate it together.
