Poem: "Love in the Third Year of This Affair that We Won’t Call Marriage"



Wrote this for PFFA's Valentine Contest this year. Based on popular vote, the poem came in joint second with Rachael Briggs's "Romantic Comedies Give Me the Screaming Me-Mes."




Love in the Third Year of This Affair that We Won’t Call Marriage


Faces have passed into memory through long beholding.

Separate
accounts pay for joint conundrums.

There will be no trade of reading materials before bed,
except books on relief
from the public library.

Unspoken rule for eating out:
the one that moves fast gets the inside seat.

Shoe size is an open secret.

Since the subject was handpicked,
double digits
must be corrected for bias.

Questions have been domesticated
but not yet neutered.

Jealousy makes up a frolicsome threesome
when it is not acting scopophiliac
or agoraphobic.

Nicknames have stuck like darts.

Certain gestures have become shorthand
for affection and disquiet.

Enough time has flown
to speak with deep nostalgia.

A fight, when a fight could be spared,
has all the vowels in it.

Reasons
for staying together have been expertly
indexed.

Contrary to expectations,
the universe has not changed,
a cause for thanksgiving.

There is no more excuse for loneliness.


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