This is yours.
I could hear the acoustic rise and fall of your chest, as if your ribs
were creaking in their expansion, flower petals sliding off of each other,
and that was the first time I had seen you after years. The culmination
of 5 years rereading your letter, pages worn grey by smudged lead, and
hearing your tiny voice at the other end of a prepaid cellphone. Your
words were a digital echo, sparks on a tower, but I felt every sigh and
inhalation next to my ear, felt the tug on my lips as words I didn’t mean
to ever form again pulled free. You were everything I was afraid of, and
everything I would try to keep from myself, as if I didn’t deserve to be
with you. In our time together, time has proven aggressive, an elusive
wind taking us through the years, sanding down the edges of our hands
and bodies until we are well-worn and comfortable, pieces of a larger
whole, not knowing what we were missing until our boys were born. We
keep building this, and sometimes the blind lead the blind, but we
always make it through, sometimes a little wiser on the other end, and
sometimes a little more nervous, but we make it through. We do this
with grace and clumsiness. Tomorrow is just another song we haven’t
danced to yet, and I love that I have you as my partner. Happy birthday.
