the habit of being

I would like to fall in love in a way that does not leave me hating the rest of my life.
I would like to drop everything and run away with you.
I’m sorry that I already know what a terrible idea that is.
I’m not sorry that you would never let it happen.
I want to get married and have babies with someone I love much more than I want anything else, despite my IQ, the way I was raised, and various other factors.
I will never be an overachiever outside of a classroom.
I think I have forgotten how to write since I met you.

. . .

With you, life is full of domestic possibility, and I am growing tired of writing about myself.
Silently, we can have our coffee in the morning, our Belgian beer at night, our lavender sorbet and our trips to the bakery.
We can have all this and tell no one.
I can tell my old stories to you and let them all die to the page.
We can rate girls’ names and countries to visit on an impossible scale.
You can tell me how beautiful I am while I idealize your ex-wife.
I have given up fucking for this silly-sounding thing they call “making love” and I am worried I’ll never be able to go back.
Nights alone seem absurd.
The record will always be flipped.
Your mother plays songs on answering machine messages.
I leave my hairpins on your bedside table.
I look through photos of your past lives.
I trace love letters on your back with the tip my finger while you fall asleep.

. . .

We come back from spending more money than it should be possible to spend in an Ethiopian restaurant and seeing a German movie with an open ending to sit on opposite ends of your couch for hours, asking each other questions from a 1981 version of Trivial Pursuit.

. . .

You lay beside me in bed, breathing weary sleep - recovering, still, from a cold that started up shortly after we met. You told me about this cold on Christmas Day, while I hid in the bathroom of my grandfather’s house in Georgia, and you were three hours behind in Seattle…

. . .

The young couple lays asleep, draped all across one another, unaware that they are basking in the utter appropriatenes of their relationship, their lives, the way they already look almost related but put their education first anyway.
From the world of the inappropriate, I stare and envy, wondering how much they realize what they have.
How much I miss being able to look at myself and believe that I am doing things the way they should be done. How much I miss having nothing to hide.
Two brown heads and a pink pillowcase. It’s only a matter of time.