We were still new to each other.
We’d kissed on New Years Eve,
after the dance, after
I’d let my determination fly away
like frigid wind across the
land-locked sea.
I couldn’t see the future, and
when I gave up the tedious trying, I
saw you.
That day, I didn’t know you
would ask eight weeks later,
on a once-per-four-years day a
once-in-a-lifetime question
and I do not recall if we ate together or
if there were flowers,
or if it snowed as it sometimes
does in a mountain’s shadow
February.
Now I have a full quarter
century of letters in a box,
chill memories of the years romance
failed and we spent the night
facing away—not intertwined—
rose petals loose in corners, and also
warmed minds’ eye views of years when it
was all better than alright; right as chosen
northern rain.
Too many bills—braces for the kids,
and college, the minivan that might hold
out another two-to-five years.
Our mothers are increasingly frail,
we fall asleep watching television,
lower backs ache and knees crack,
I ask you: if this is forty-five,
how did grandma bear being ninety-two,
my love.
Somehow it is in the aging—
innocence could never be so bold*—
the kneeling/standing/weeping times,
the daily weaving and treetop scrambling
that we have reached a bit
of room to breathe, a bit of earth
to share our circumnavigation
and gather each other into eternal
wholeness.
*from Kirby Heyborne’s “Blushing Through”
This piece was published in 2024 as part of the Holiday Lit Blitz by the Mormon Lit Lab. Sign up for our newsletter for future updates.
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