Maybe I knew

We have talked a lot, you and I, about love
about our belief that it was not the only key to a successful marriage
saying that if it happened, wonderful, but that it was not a necessary prerequisite
for achieving what we wanted most in this world.
And yet it happened. We are lucky.
 
This is our love song that is not a love song.
I sing not of your face
or your eyes (though oh, how I love the sight of your uncivilized blue eyes)
or the feel of your hair in my fingers.
This is the chorus,
my recounting of the times
of our meetings of the mind.
 
Maybe I knew when we met for the first time, sitting at opposite ends of a bench,
trying to decide how to explain ourselves to each other,
and you shrugged your shoulders and laid your cards out on the proverbial table
and I was able to show you my secret smile
and call your bluff.
 
Certainly I knew several days later,
when I sat at my desk, twisting back and forth in a chair,
trying to decide whether I would see you again
and the back of my mind spoke up and said, confidently:
If you see him again
if you go out with him again
you will marry him.
(And yes, reader, I married him.)
 
Maybe I knew
because there were so many times when I tried to explain to you
that I needed time to recover after being with people
that sometimes other humans were so overwhelming that I wanted
time to think to recover to process
before I could be myself again.
And you always understood, and not just because you were the same way.
 
Certainly there was the time
when I lay bleeding, exhausted and triumphant after the birth of our first child
and out of the corner of my eye
I saw you walk over to the table where our boy was waiting
and I saw you smile and say to him, quietly, “Hello, son.”
And there was nothing I could do but gasp out a verse of praise –
give thanks to G-d, for His kindness is forever –
knocked breathless by joy.
 
And somehow most of all, I think of the time
when again I tried to explain why
depression can be so seductive, so interesting
because the darkness seems to coil up in corners
to twist itself into forms intricate and beautiful (false front)
into secrets, promising me (false promise)
that I have discovered something that no other human can see.
(“You are the only one who will ever know how lovely we are,” the strangling vines whisper.)
And you closed your eyes
(in my memory, you close your eyes)
and you smiled with guilty excitement
and you said,
“I understand. I know what you mean.”

Eventually, I asked you:
Why did you smile when you said that?
Why did you seem so happy?
It’s not that I object
but maybe it was a strange thing to say.
At least, there are people who would tell me it was.
You smiled again
and said:
“Because it meant I’m not the only one.”