Each year I try to build the words to match the way I feel,
and crumple every draft I start: none worthy, none quite real.
The feeling is too vast and too alive for words to hold,
and every new attempt I make goes cold before it's told.
I watch you when you're focused, deep in something, unaware,
your brown eyes lost, your steady brow, the falling of your hair,
and you don't feel my eyes on you until you lift your face,
and catch me, and I look away: our small, unspoken grace.
Years ago we promised something simple, and it sounded small:
to let each other change across the years, and that was all.
Then came the work we do together, more of it you take with grace:
the bills, the car, the groceries, the endless keeping of the place.
And somehow that small promise held, and keeps us both alive:
you bear the weight that buries me, so I can breathe and thrive.
Your smile is the Christmas tree the night the lights cascade,
the long wait done, the dark giving way, the whole crowd unafraid,
that sudden flood of light, that caught delight, that glad surprise,
and all the waiting world goes warm beneath those kindled skies.
In those rare stolen hours astride your horse, you're finally free,
no weight to lift, no one to fix, no one you have to be.
Your hands repair the things that I'd have given up as broken,
they plant and mend and shape and fasten, all their work unspoken,
and leave a room behind them better, sounder than they found,
while my hands, too thick and clumsy, send the simplest things to ground.
If I could give you one thing, love, it wouldn't be a rose,
but ten clear minutes through my eyes, to see what each one knows:
the one who's carried more than she'll admit, and given more than she'd weigh,
and loved more faithfully than she has ever let herself say.
After all these years, I still have not found words enough, or right;
each sentence shrinks before the feeling, far too thin, too slight.
The feeling is too vast and too alive for words to hold,
so I will crumple, start again, and try, and not grow cold.