To Bryant

I feel bad for people
who aren’t us.
People who don’t think romantically
about the number 42,
people who don’t think “incredible”
is an incredible word.
People who’ve never had their name anagrammed
as a way of being flirted with,
people who aren’t texted “Hey”
every day at 9:45 PM,
people who don’t share a handwritten letter
on the last day of every month—
people like that,
people who aren’t us.

“We’re so lucky” is our motto,
first handed to me on a slip of paper
pulled from a cigar box,
in your old room, back when your
comic-collaged walls were new to me,
and so was the way you treated me
with such poeticism.
The strips of paper in the cigar box all spoke of luck,
and you told me they were a remnant from
college, when you would hand them out
to strangers, but the one you gave me
felt personal,
because luck was looking out for us
and luck was looking out for me.

Sometimes we have to be patient with luck,
and it reveals itself with time.
What seemed like just a waitress job at first
was the universe and its funny plans
channeling me towards your unsuspecting heart.
Sometimes luck walks up to us at work
dressed in a white-collared shirt
and tells us it has a twin
with the same name as us
and we have no idea what to do with this information
but luck is very handsome,
so we see where it leads,
and it turns into an epic journey.

Maybe it’s not luck, maybe it’s too kind of us
to give luck all the credit for what we grow together
every day,
maybe luck is as hollow as the cynics proclaim,
but regardless,
I still feel
so damn lucky.
I don’t know if people like to read love poems
about strangers,
but loving you makes me want to
tell it to the trees,
sing it to the sky,
yell it to all yonder.

I imagine that people who aren’t us
wake up in the morning,
feeling content and ready for their day,
maybe with a dried drool patch on their pillow,
and some crust in the crux of their eye,
but fine all the same.
People who aren’t us
probably kiss their spouse good morning,
eat eggs and toast for breakfast,
listen to their favorite music while on the drive to work.
And yet I would never, ever
want to be these people,
no matter how kind, pretty, or smart
any of them are,
no matter what kind, pretty, and smart
lives they lead,
no matter what kind, pretty, or smart
people they know.
Because they’re not us.

I’m lucky you can still love me while I cry over
a pen-blotched load of laundry,
or while I’m shooting wads of snot
into a tissue when I’m sick.
I’m lucky we both like books,
and share an affection for alliteration,
lucky we can walk in the woods
and feel nature pulsate through our veins.
I’m lucky I know heaven
by the way you look at me
with your warm, brown eyes,
opened just a little wider,
and with a shimmer in your pupils,
pulling back the veil upon your soul.
That’s why I call you my sun,
because in those moments,
your eyes cast sunbeams
and my face feels like a flower
basking in the radiant energy
of this immaculate shared truth called love.

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To read last year’s anniversary post, click here.