Poetry, March 2023.

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I can faintly hear my wedding day

over the steady fire of 8-bit gunshots

and the hum of an old AC unit.

Stretched long in front of the perfect, frigid air

I am watching in quiet reverie

as she weaves like silk between her enemies.

She is so precise in her movements, her D-pad combos,

And I wonder if I’ll ever be so deadly sharp at anything.

We scatter breadcrumbs over seven years,

But remembering the first, I can picture glowing

in those lowlights at the Aquarium: an opal, pearly blue

inside the hollows of our cheeks;

across the peaks of newborn smiles.

We couldn’t get a photo because the flash was so insistent

on being fully useless, so I took a moment instead

to leave behind my fear of deep water.

Marching forth from lions and lambs

Into weekends at her parents’ house,

Sunday breakfast at the diner where every waitress knows our names.

How I’d miss her every Monday, pining to be and to belong

In her bed, in her future, at her side.

In a month named for a god of war,

I became a lover and not a fighter

for the first time in my mythos.

And, In seven years to the very day—

–our loud,  roaring wedding day–

from marching forth and looking back on

all the times I swore, I swore I’d never find

such a compelling reason to survive.

So, while not quite deadly or sharp at anything,

I think the wild winds of March have shorn me into

a believer in surprises, in magic, and the occasional happy ending.