when you sleep head to toe because the sound of his breathing keeps you awake, and he hugs your feet and hushes you quiet when still you cannot sleep; when you wake him to ask him to pray for dreams bad and he mumbles to the heavens begging God for wife for peace
when he builds you a rock garden with rocks he’s dug and he fills in the cracks with the softest kind of soil and he takes you to the greenhouse that sells pansies and aster and daisies and tells you, happy mother’s day, even though he doesn’t like flowers
when he folds your laundry and bathes your son and cooks you homemade fries and fish even though you don’t deserve for the way you cry and carry on simply for the bulge in your belly and the hormones and the tired
when he asks you to marry him with every kiss and til death do us part when he holds you to his side, the side God pulled the rib from, and you feel your skin wrapping round the world for somehow, waking up to each other keeps everything bad from becoming unbearable
it’s the soul finding mate eight years after trellis-wedding, the kind of cleaving that makes you believe in a wrinkled kind of love, the kind of love that rocks long on front porch when all of the babies and the work and the late nights cease, the kind that never stops breathing life into the other
this is how you know.
with ann, thanking:
351. for a man i can trust
352. for visit with mum and dad, and movies with mum, and dad’s birthday and walking dutch town with them
353. for son’s handmade card and husband’s homemade breakfast greeting mother’s-day dawn
354. for the sound of robins
355. for cook-outs in our backyard
356. for calves skipping field
357. for games with friends
358. for clean houses and feet up and good books
359. for the smell of flowers in a greenhouse
360. for everything that makes life a celebration