You Dance

Your chin tilts as your body sinks into itself. Your arms fall to your sides as your knees bend and your chest lifts. You face me with your open palms and your taut back and your turned out knees. My voice raises your arms above your head. My touch opens your legs. One knee straightens as the other bends. I am inside you. Your body balances under me and over me. I push you. You turn into me.

An extended breath. I am behind you. Your back bends, and I am holding your waist, tracing your arm’s extension. Your breath catches as I lift you. You will not move away from me. You cannot. Lightly, harshly, sensually: your body pulses against me.

A painting exists by the colors on the canvas. You exist by the lilt of me.

Day 692

“If only there could be an invention… that bottled up a memory, like a scent.  And it never faded, and it never got stale.  And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again… I’d like to keep this moment and never forget it.”
–Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Hours before I was lying in bed reading my just-because present from the Manhattan bookstore, I was sitting in the passenger’s seat of my car.  My hair twirled out of the band and dangled out the window.  My eyes blinked back sun-induced tears.  We were not in Monte Carlo: we were not even in Manhattan.  There were no peasants wandering the streets.  There were no haunting Rebeccas or fat Van Hoppers, thank God.

I thought to myself, “if I could pick a day to live again, I would pick today.  Today: perfect.”

We fell in love, but not today.  We traveled to Gallop, Bryson City, Savannah, and New York City, but not today. We were married in a perfect service on a rainy day, but not today.  Today, I sat by my husband after a trip to the grocery store and a walk around the Forum.  The windows were down;  the sunroof was open;  his favorite music was blaring.

We didn’t talk.  We weren’t, at the moment, holding hands, but I would take the second Mrs. de Winter’s invention and apply it to this moment over all moments.  In this moment, I realized not that I loved my husband but that I loved him more on Day 692 than I did when I told him I loved him on Day 63 or when we married on Day 321.  I think I would keep Day 692 bottled up as if a scent, but I know the scent of Day 693 will be too intoxicating to compare to 692.

“To My Dear and Loving Husband”

As I write a test on poetry for my high school students, I find this poem for my husband, who cleaned the kitchen for me last night when I went to bed early with a sinus infection. He then woke me up at 4am, so I could finish my prep-work for school.

Here’s a poem (that even rhymes!) for you, my love.

“To My Dear and Loving Husband” by Anne Bradstreet
If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me, ye women, if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold.
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor aught but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live, no more we may live ever.

Daniel and me at West Side Story… which he lovingly endured with enthusiasm, eventhough it was my kind of musical–sad ending and lots of dancing!