The day awakes with the sun
smiling down through a crystal haze.
Walking through the snow,
our footsteps gentle prayers
like kisses on white canvas,
we hold hands and talk,
impervious to the chill breath of winter.
Fifteen minutes to walk to the diner
where we talk and hold hands some more
over the spiraling steam of a French roast,
coffee and conversation seems so good.
Somehow this feels sacred,
like some ritual for Saturday mornings,
the sort of ritual where you study
each other’s faces and relearn
the lines and crinkles wrought by years of smiles,
the ritual where you fall in love over and over again,
and realize that forever does not
have to be some kind of fantasy.
After six years, the small intimacy of
touching fingertips and exchanging glances
over a breakfast table or a dinner table
never stops being special and monumental and important.
We know something that somehow feels secret:
The courtship does not have to end;
sometimes less really is more:
all the nuances, all the small things
that might seem insignificant to the observer—
those are the things that hold the most meaning.
And so it is with us; the enjoyment
of each other’s company is the one thing
we most like to have at any given moment.
The quiet grace of our love
is better than any garish declaration.
We know that when breakfast is done
we will retrace our steps toward home
and engage in the rituals and routines
that make us feel most content and happy:
the little simple things which would
appear dull to anyone who is not us,
and as day strides toward evening
and evening toward night, we are never bored.
We have private jokes and laughter
until our sides hurt and our eyes are streaming.
We have old movies and popcorn and cuddling on the couch.
We have time spent reading side by side in bed,
sharing a particularly well-written passage here and there
while the furnace sighs a breath of warmth into the room.
But most of all we have one another,
and when the night has wound down
and we are way too tired to stay awake any longer,
the moon is there, if only a sliver of silver light,
to ease us into slumber
where we float down, down, down...
where even in the ether of our subconscious
the mere nearness of the person who loves us most
gives us solace and comfort
until the beginning of another day.

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