I saw a poem on Facebook this morning, and I posted it to the Husband’s timeline, because it has never felt like a more accurate description. “…To be loved like a poet loves words…” My God, I feel like every time I write a poem it’s some sort of vocabularian masturbation. Word whacking aside, this is my feeble attempt to describe in my poetic words my poetic love for my completely non-poetic husband. Who always reads my poems before I publish (except this), who reads every sentence I ever write, patiently lets me grill him into criticizing me, and typically angrily tells me to shut up whenever I tell him how much I suck at writing…. As Stephen King said, every writer needs an ideal reader, and there is no one more ideal then my Bubba.
If I would type every second
Of every passing day
There wouldn’t be enough words – despite an eternity of clacking
Anything I could draft would be empty – like foam in a beer glass
Something as petty as pretty words – cannot convey what you mean to me
In truth, I know so many, and I easily toss them around
Some of them are vulgar
Some of them outright crude
Some of them might be critical
Depending on my mood, it’s most likely right but, rude
Yet no matter how my black and white dog barks
No matter how our dogs bit
No matter how many teeth marks
No matter how many re-opened scars
I still get to wake up next to you
I don’t know how we do this
I don’t know how we always get through
I know in all my darkness, there is always safety in you
I know in all your silence, my eyes can see right through
We went from fighting fists to total bliss
Only a decade or so overdue
On the day I became your wife
The programs proudly read
Today I marry my Best Friend
Today this poem is thanking him
For being everything when I am not
You are the one who keeps me here
Two feet on the ground
You are the one who reminds me to swim
When all I want is to drown
You are always the light
At the end of my darkest tunnels
You and I created this life
I never again want to imagine it with someone else
I love you, I love you, I love you again
To eternities of sleepovers with my best friend
To idiotic laughter and yogic faceplants
To watching our kids grow and becoming grandparents
To watching me become old, and my hair go gray and straight
To watching you continue to shave, because you’re already bald
Because you are the one who made me believe I could stay around that late
You are the one who made me dream endings not ending in -ide
Because you are my E-van, my ticket to Heaven
Even though E-van does not rhyme with Evan
I love you Bubba.
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