She chose me.
Little old me.
She could’ve gone younger.
She could’ve gone somewhere with more zeros.
She could’ve gone easier.
But she chose this.
So I asked her. Bluntly.
Give me the naked truth.
She said:
“It’s your large dictionary.
And your oratory skills.”
I know how to get her
excited.
Delighted.
Vulnerable and open
to share her traumas
and rewrite them.
Then we recite them
over and over and over again.
We don’t stop.
We can’t stop
until the traumas
simply become
old stories.
I go deep
with the similes,
with the metaphors.
I hit every angle,
every point of view,
until she can’t take anymore.
My communication hits her
in all the right places.
The walls she built
around her heart
Shattered.
Demolished.
Obliterated.
Dictionary in my right pocket
Love letters in my left.
Right stroke
Left stroke
What’s the best stroke?
Respect
Aretha said it best
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
She knows what she means to me
because I tell her.
I show her.
I let her be all of her
the messy,
the scared,
the parts she used to apologize for.
Those are my favorite parts of her.
She’s younger.
We’ve done the math.
They look at us and run it too…
like it’s supposed to add up to something
shameful.
But she doesn’t see expiration dates.
She sees the library.
Every scar
a chapter.
Every failure
a footnote.
Every woman I ever loved wrong
taught me how to love her right.
My age isn’t the problem.
My age is the answer.
See, my greatest gift
was never the vocabulary.
Never the metaphors.
Never the perfectly placed pause.
It was making her feel
like the most important sentence
ever written.
I carry a big black pen.
And I damn sure know how to use it.
The strokes of the pen.
The words from my mouth.
The love from my heart.
That’s why she’s with me.
Now somebody show
that elephant the door.
—
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