It's November first.
Leaves blow around on the trees,
still green, cut up among gray
and white clouds and
patches of blue
sky.
I have
no topic
with which
to begin save
my fixation on
future pain,
potential
loss.
Abandonment,
failure.
It's difficult to stay
in the moment.
I still recognize joy.
It
envelops
me
in much
the same way
grief pours out of me,
all overwhelming.
But I vacillate between the
saturated emotions of
love and the rictus
of anxiety that
lives in my
muscles,
fueled
by
obsessive, intrusive
thoughts.
Is everyone like this?
I can't let go.
Is it my age?
My sex?
My long history of broken
connections?
I'm building a home,
a household,
a family.
Is that healthy?
Or is the question moot?
I belong nowhere else.
I have no other refuge.
I'm building a refuge.
For him, for me.
With no
experience,
no models. I pull
endless ends together,
never knowing where the
middle is, knowing only that
I want to overcome all
obstacles, master all
daunting tasks.
For him, for me.
I still look down Washington
Avenue on my way home
from work, at the side-
walk in front of the
university, where
he said
yes.
The
happiest
moment of
my life, when the
whole world opened up.
Bloomed.
And we did it. Together.
We made a household.
Together.
We negotiated a respectful
roommate relationship.
Only gradually did
it become a
tenderer
thing.
My love for him is boundless.
It encompasses worlds.
Every moment of pain
and grief and fear,
every step inside
the vast terrain
of emptiness
that has
defined
my life
for
forty-
seven
long years,
was worth it,
to be here, with
him. Even if I fail.
Even if I'm abandoned.
Because I'm blessed with
his trust, his faith. How can
I do less than my best, to shelter,
to provide. Let at least that much
go to him, to that beautiful man,
that beautiful child. How could
I have known the day I met
him how he would migrate
through my soul to take
up residence in my
old, ugly, burnt
up heart? To
dissolve
so
much
of what
I thought
I knew and leave
resilience in its wake?
To become home.
Kin.
Family.
I want him in my life more than
I've ever wanted anything
in that life.
It's
November first.
It's
a new
lease. It's
a second year in
our home. It's a third
year of loving Eli.
December 13, 2021
