Wyl Staedtler
Feb 26th, 2006, 03:03:53 AM
You don't say I love you. It isn't intentional, like the way you always leave the cap off the toothpaste because it bothers me to no end, but it isn't accidental either; you mean to avoid thick paper cards and cinnamon hearts, although I doubt you've ever stopped and said to yourself, "Pshaw! Hallmark and bonbons are contrived tokens of affection!"
Instead, you come in from the car and hand me my very first Discworld novel and a motion picture soundtrack. "Because," you say with a great heaving sigh, "I've accepted that you will never appreciate jazz but at least know good writing when you read it. I'm learning to pick my battles." And you waggle your eyebrows in their own funny language. Please think I'm adorable, they mime.
You don't read me poetry either. It isn't because you don't enjoy verse; I've seen the scattered, well-thumbed copies of Whitman, Coleridge, Eliot. You have often sat up late by lamplight, pouring over rice-paper-thin pages and sighing at a well-turned phrase, the satisfied kind of sigh that follows a prime steak dinner.
Instead, you put away the leftovers and carefully scrape our plates and fill the sink with soapy water. You pour me a glass of wine ("Only one, young lady, you're underage." grin, grin, wink) and tell me to hush and go relax. With easy grace you, whistling, clean the burnt-edged saute pan, the casserole dish, the collander, the steamer. You never once complain how many dishes I have used to cook a simple meal.
You don't send me flowers. It isn't because you don't like them. Often we have walked through parks and you have stopped and said, "Oh look..." and bent to gently thumb a small blossom that I would never have known was there. You come from a family of gardeners, a heritage littered with wizened old men and wrinkled old women who putter about and coo at Hermerocallis. There are plants at your house whose leaves could span a womans waist, whose flowers smell like summer and rain and everything fresh.
Instead, you drive half an hour in the pouring rain to get "the greatest takeaway in the world". You come home, dripping even from the short run up the stairs to my apartment, and spread cardboard boxes on a sheet on the floor. You pull out cloud-dampened travel brochures, pictures of pretty places you want to go to, and prop them up to form a wall around us. Thin-sliced goat, tiny chili peppers, tzatziki sauce, ginger beer; this'll taste horrid together, I complain. "No, no, just try it." Your fingers deftly piece together a bite and press it to my lips and you look so blatently excited that even if it was the worst, most foul thing in the world and sure to kill me, I would. Of course it isn't, it's amazing, and you are too busy 'mmm'-ing to look smug.
You don't say I love you. Not out loud, anyhow. And you don't read me poetry or send me flowers, or sing to me, or write me letters. Instead you keep me awake at night in absolute wonder at how very much you do care, until the bubble in my chest is so large I can scarcely breathe. You are too much for words, or script, or floristry. Your love cannot be tied down by parchment, iambic pentameter, sun and shade, heaven or earth. Your love is not a shy embrace, or a dying confession laid to rest on paling lips; it is alive and delightful and so real that neither Auden, Browning, Constable could spell it's nimbled form. It is soft and calming and blooms to bend the orchids head in shame. I have no written proof of it, on paper; but I have the whispered touch of forefinger on arm as a treaty, signed with a kiss pressed to my suprasternal notch ("Bless Ondaatje, bless him, bless him..."), sealed with the lingering trace of thumb against jawline.
I have cleaned china, shelves overflowing with books, pretty silk scarves from penny markets, hot cups of strong tea in the grey-dark hours of early morning, whispered secrets, smiles, sarcasm, a plumber, a stringer-of-guitars, killer of cockroaches, Casanova to felines, newly-picked oranges pressed into palms, the smell of silver and sunset and sand and giving.
You are love... and so much more.
Instead, you come in from the car and hand me my very first Discworld novel and a motion picture soundtrack. "Because," you say with a great heaving sigh, "I've accepted that you will never appreciate jazz but at least know good writing when you read it. I'm learning to pick my battles." And you waggle your eyebrows in their own funny language. Please think I'm adorable, they mime.
You don't read me poetry either. It isn't because you don't enjoy verse; I've seen the scattered, well-thumbed copies of Whitman, Coleridge, Eliot. You have often sat up late by lamplight, pouring over rice-paper-thin pages and sighing at a well-turned phrase, the satisfied kind of sigh that follows a prime steak dinner.
Instead, you put away the leftovers and carefully scrape our plates and fill the sink with soapy water. You pour me a glass of wine ("Only one, young lady, you're underage." grin, grin, wink) and tell me to hush and go relax. With easy grace you, whistling, clean the burnt-edged saute pan, the casserole dish, the collander, the steamer. You never once complain how many dishes I have used to cook a simple meal.
You don't send me flowers. It isn't because you don't like them. Often we have walked through parks and you have stopped and said, "Oh look..." and bent to gently thumb a small blossom that I would never have known was there. You come from a family of gardeners, a heritage littered with wizened old men and wrinkled old women who putter about and coo at Hermerocallis. There are plants at your house whose leaves could span a womans waist, whose flowers smell like summer and rain and everything fresh.
Instead, you drive half an hour in the pouring rain to get "the greatest takeaway in the world". You come home, dripping even from the short run up the stairs to my apartment, and spread cardboard boxes on a sheet on the floor. You pull out cloud-dampened travel brochures, pictures of pretty places you want to go to, and prop them up to form a wall around us. Thin-sliced goat, tiny chili peppers, tzatziki sauce, ginger beer; this'll taste horrid together, I complain. "No, no, just try it." Your fingers deftly piece together a bite and press it to my lips and you look so blatently excited that even if it was the worst, most foul thing in the world and sure to kill me, I would. Of course it isn't, it's amazing, and you are too busy 'mmm'-ing to look smug.
You don't say I love you. Not out loud, anyhow. And you don't read me poetry or send me flowers, or sing to me, or write me letters. Instead you keep me awake at night in absolute wonder at how very much you do care, until the bubble in my chest is so large I can scarcely breathe. You are too much for words, or script, or floristry. Your love cannot be tied down by parchment, iambic pentameter, sun and shade, heaven or earth. Your love is not a shy embrace, or a dying confession laid to rest on paling lips; it is alive and delightful and so real that neither Auden, Browning, Constable could spell it's nimbled form. It is soft and calming and blooms to bend the orchids head in shame. I have no written proof of it, on paper; but I have the whispered touch of forefinger on arm as a treaty, signed with a kiss pressed to my suprasternal notch ("Bless Ondaatje, bless him, bless him..."), sealed with the lingering trace of thumb against jawline.
I have cleaned china, shelves overflowing with books, pretty silk scarves from penny markets, hot cups of strong tea in the grey-dark hours of early morning, whispered secrets, smiles, sarcasm, a plumber, a stringer-of-guitars, killer of cockroaches, Casanova to felines, newly-picked oranges pressed into palms, the smell of silver and sunset and sand and giving.
You are love... and so much more.