POEM - Only Always

Our home is less than a mile away

from where we had our first kiss,

spent our first night together,

first agreed on becoming a couple,

fought our way through

the first hardships of marriage,

bought the first outfit for

our very first child,

and first introduced him to our last

  

Crazy to recognize that

none of that stuff happened

in the place we now call home

It’s also crazy to think that,

after all of our travels,

we landed right back where we started

  

Less than a mile from our forever,

are the streets where I made

my earliest memories

Beaten by a father whose footsteps,

I avoided like poison ivy

Nurtured by an uncle who used to be

the wild footsteps beside my dad’s,

long before he had kids of his own

  

I now buy 40s from the same clerk

who routinely sold Virginia Slims

to my grandmother

And, across the street, the school

at which I took my EXPO exam;

the same school our son

will be attending in the fall

His mother, a teacher who won’t stop

talking about a bond the city’s

looking to pass, which would see

said school remade

This from the woman who used to

drink until brave enough to dance

upon the bar-top of a nearby dive

But these days, we spend our nights

going over to-do lists, and hoping

to eventually become fans

of Doctor Who

  

Our home is less than a mile away

from a million seemingly insignificant

moments we’ve shared

And it baffles me that we never planned

on that being the surreal fact of life

This is simply where the wind blew us

until our roots finally took hold

  

We haven’t been here nearly long enough,

in my opinion, to be facing hastened doom

on the horizon

So please do not begin believing

that all of this unplanned destruction

we’ve happened upon is going to have

any effect whatsoever

on whatever box we call our home

  

So long as you’re alive,

my roots will grow among yours;

a knot (of us) which this world

would have to kill me

in order to untangle

As, only always, I am yours