Familiarity
The morning after we make
our long-married love,
I make the bed laughing.
The mattress lists
to one side. Books
are scattered on the floor.
The sheets look
like the sheets
of a desperate person.
Two desperate people.
We’ve been together
one third my life now.
My hips are going
and must be held
just so. Your knees ache
if you’re on them
too long. We must
be careful or injured.
Yet desire throbs
like a busy signal,
and more than anything,
I am afraid
of the terrifying passion
of familiarity.
It isn’t at all
what I expected.
Really, I thought love
was a pond we flung
ourselves into at the beginning.
Starting with the deepest part.
I could not know
it was an ocean we entered.
And the times we thought to drown
in new love’s craze
and flailed our arms
and kicked, there was only surf
lapping gentle at our feet
and before us a body
of water so vast
we could not see it.
-Francesca Bell
first appeared in The Chattahoochee Review
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