marriage

Just a warning, all. I'm sorry in advance.
Forgive my nostalgia, my self-indugent pity party.
Today, quite simply, sucks.

Memories overwhelm, tears threaten, and I am in no mood to be reckoned with. I wish I could say that I knew enough to grasp how meaningful, how simultaneously menial and yet miraculous marriage can be. Fortunately or unfortunately, I cannot.

Printed in the program, three years ago this day.

Habitation
Marriage is not
a house or even a tent

it is before that, and colder:

The edge of the forest, the edge
of the desert
the unpainted stairs
at the back where we squat
outside, eating popcorn

where painfully and with wonder
at having survived even
this far

we are learning to make fire

Margaret Atwood