...the poem I wanted to write...

“He is exactly

the poem

I wanted to write.”

 ~Mary Oliver

Our date-nights often take us to the local Barnes & Noble. It’s the closest bookstore that is open on a Saturday night. We have a local used bookstore in our small town but it closes terribly early. I told him that if this place closes maybe an independent store will come. It’s starting to go where the other big box stores have: sad discounted books, and other odds and ends. Regardless, he wants us to have a “clean, well-lighted place” like the Hemingway story. *He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.*

They serve coffee drinks that were so tasteless that I convinced him to cross the street to the local Starbucks and return with better drinks. He gets overwhelmed by Starbucks’ order of adjectives. He forgets what he likes to drink. When I start with “do you want a hot or cold beverage” he whispers, “I don’t know” on the verge of a meltdown. *He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.*

Honestly, we have better books at home. But, we go because we have always gone to a bookstore and he wanted to be out in the world. He wants to browse; he wants to thumb through. Each and every time, he buys something to support local…even though I remind him that it is a chain. He says that it is *our* chain. *He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.*

I love him. We rarely use those words to one another. We talk in code, in phrases that we understand. I could not have created a more perfect partner for myself. Today he made me angry because he tried to stretch my back when I don’t like such things but he likes them so sometimes he gets it wrong. He sometimes forgets that I am not a part of his body. When I cry, he hugs me tight even when I’ve never wanted to be touched, a residual of abandonment issues. *He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.*

Tonight when I was annoyed with my own book, I sat it down and saw this. Good goddess, *he is exactly the poem I wanted to write.*