A Little Something For The Missus On The Occasion Of Our 3rd Wedding Anniversary

The Better Parts

I am my left eye
the weaker one
the one that droops a little
the one that goes dead in photographs

You are my right eye
the one that winks
the one with the arched brow
the one that brightens when I laugh

You are both lips
Partly because they are one of my finer attributes
And partly because
without you
they have no purpose anyway

My hair
I am the gray ones

My teeth
I am the two obnoxious ones up front
begging in vain to go unnoticed

My tongue
You are salty and sweet
I am sour and bitter

I am my cheekbone
at the end of a frat boy’s fist
I am my wrist
after slamming my sled into the side of a tree
And you
Are every other bone in me

Solid

Unbroken

The frame


I am my hands on a rainy day
Cold, stiff and uncooperative

You are my hands
around trekking poles in the Grand Canyon,
mixing mortar in the village of Taviefe,
breaking bread in Florence
You are my hands when they are folded in prayer

I am the finger forever pointing at someone else
And you are the three pointing back at me

I am my middle
At 165
And you are my middle
At 145

You are my back
Strong, smooth, even in tone

I am my legs carrying me from City Hall station
to the World Financial Center
on a snowy Monday morning

And you are my legs
tangled up in yours
on the first sleepy Sunday of spring

You are my right knee
The reliable one
The one that bent to propose

I am my left knee
The one that disappears at the most crucial moments
leaving me flat on my back like a dusty turtle
in the middle of the South Kaibab trail

I am the shirt I should’ve thrown out three seasons ago
And you are the jeans I look good in no matter what

You
are those rare occasions when I just go ahead and say “Yes” to something
without overthinking it
You
are action,
operation,
spontaneity,
forward movement,


Life for the sake of living

And I

am a stick in the mud

I am the part that’s about to turn down a free plane ticket and an
extra day in Paris because I’m worried we won’t get someone to feed the cats
And you are the part
That sees an overbooked flight
as an opportunity

You are the wine we drank
later that night
on a sidestreet café in the Quartier Latin
And I am the time I lost 'if'-ing

My heart?

Yeah.


That’s all you.

-not the metaphor
-not the idea
-not poetry

But blood.

Cells.

Function.

The essential.

The part that cannot be removed
without the rest of it slamming violently into

indistinction


And somewhere down the road
when all my parts
-the lovely ones
And the ones less so-
come to crumble under the weight of

inevitability





You will be my epitaph.





And I will be the dandelion

creeping up at its base

plucked unceremoniously by a hired hand

So that something more productive


can grow in its place.



x,o

-IMBA

10/08