Forms of Love

Listening

I was going to write you a poem
about all the things you told me:
about the . . . .
and the . . . .
I wanted to show you that I listened,
that when you talked to me it was not like at home,
that here you could hum in anticipation
of the person you were becoming
by your talking and by my listening
but I stopped.

I knew you would not like my poem,
so prosy, no metaphors, and with such long lines,
just the things you said, you did,
or at least the way that I heard them, remembered them.
Then I saw your husband reading your words,
my words, his words,
and I heard his words that you had not told me,
and I heard words that you had never spoken
in a kitchen I had never seen,
frightening children I had never met.

But all that may not have stopped me.
yet I stopped
about half way through my memories,
coming to the darkest, hardest things you told me
about the choices you had made
in the marriage you are writing
and then I finally listened
to your poem, full of myth and terror and redemption,
hungers tested but denied,
and I realized I was never meant to have a speaking part.