For example, you never told me that I looked pretty
or that you liked a certain color on me,
I asked you to drive me around town
like you were my chauffeur
and I often nagged you about the smallest things.

And certainly your love was big enough
for both of us
and my desire to please was extraordinary
as witness my compulsive neatness,
but having to have the last word
was a given for me.

If you were here now—just supposing, I might
come right out and say, “Tell me
how beautiful you think I am,”
and you might feel free enough to say,
“No, I am not going to drive you to the mall.
Let’s stay home and go back to bed.”

And suppose it was all one big setup
for a life that went crashing into
a heap of loss, the rubble of pain
and the eternal verity called for
want of a better word, “love.”

Beyond the walls of life and death
there grows a rose that never dies.
The thorns ripped open all the lies,
now nothing’s left to do but rise.