The red mason jar’s candle is laden
with the matches I dropped while trying to light
this toy votive’s wick.
It flickers highlighting your pillbox
crammed with tablets for each of seven days.
Stuffed with McDonald’s napkins, the chrome
napkin holder glistens.
Our dinner could be caviar and champagne,
not red beans from a mix,
everything smothered in hot sauce.
We pick at our food and chat about the president,
the pressboard bookcase you mentioned
and the futility of both.
Later we lock as closely as those nuts and bolts
you used to build the bookcase
which now holds your Not Enough Faith
and my Prayers of St. Teresa.
Our fastening is not wood bolted with steel
but a binding of wrapped thighs instead of twine
and the rise and fall of breath.
Its finish, embers a violet mist
This joining’s beautiful as a June wind swooping
across roses, its flight into spiraling clouds
before they scent the earth with rain.
Love must be one of the seven wonders of the world.
I forget the other six.
