reprinted on our 21st anniversary
Everyone tells me I’m forty-two.
The calendar confirms this.
The mirrors all agree.
But there was that moment the other night
when you parted your lips to laugh
and brushed my knee with a carefree hand.
There must have been some magic in that.
The china and linen on which we dined
turned plastic trays on plastic sheets
and there we were, in a grade school cafeteria,
you, the new girl, and me, the class clown,
doing what I could to make the young girls laugh
because I’ve always loved the sound.
Later, on the drive home,
you leaned across the console
and whispered a secret incantation
that changed the dangled keys
into my father’s and sent my eyes scanning
for a place to tuck my borrowed wheels,
to make you laugh some more,
and turn the volume down
on all your mother’s warnings.
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Ken, I don’t know if you can hear how loudly I cheer for you, the ferocity of my own sapling-self breaking up asphalt and shoving aside gravel to get enough leverage for me to stand and yell, “YES!” with everything inside of me that wants to be free and is struggling to be born. Develop this gift you have, and follow it where it takes you. It will feed your soul.
In the words of a line from The Green Mile, I just about believe that very thing.