Lazy Love Song

for my husband and granddaughter

The other night, I gazed at what I’d won–
you, tethered to the couch and growling deep
with dinner, treating all within your realm
to symphonies of snorts and poots and winds
and afterward, you’d smile, as if you were
a child, with innocence your one excuse.
And did I say I love you? Yes, I do.
I love the you who loves the you in me,
I love the one we are, the two we were,
the stains that bloom on every shirt you own,
the waddle in your walk, your stubborn stance,
your belly pushing out from under T’s
and body music I first thought was crass.
I love that we’re so comfortable with us,
our crevices, and dips and droops and scars,
our sprouting hairs and balding spots and nights
of churned tequila failing to stay down.
I love that you have seen me so collapsed
that all I was was air, and that right now
I’m naked, menopausal, sweating stink
and close to tears, and still you hold me tight
as if somebody else would want the me
you have. I love the blatant man in you–
your shining armor, and the certain way
you make a circle safe around our lives,
our sloppy lives, our wild blues lyric lives,
our sunken chairs and all our mismatched cups
our million books in pieced-together rooms
our nights of belch and burp and whiskey shots
and pie and bags of Twizzlers gobbled down
while TV slaps us numb and dulls our brains
with thrilling lives so far outside of ours.
I love that you’re a singer, sans a key,
who warbles, screeches, hums and drives me mad
with painfully dumb lyrics you create
to songs I thought I knew. And sometimes we
just stop and stare and wonder, How did this
work out? I had a husband, you a wife,
and then, all gone. We shoved aside whole lives
for days of nothing but ourselves, and yes
our girl, the one who came to us a child
of separate parts. Not ours but all of ours,
she charmed us with her sweet disarming smile
and days of raven hair. You opened wide your arms
and pulled her in, our orphan girl, our light,
our sudden daughter brandishing her wounds
and trusting us to heal. And now, of course,
she’s you, an entertainer, droll and wise,
laughing loud at things that no one else
can see. I’m more than blessed to have you both,
although the blessing’s hard for most to see.
I wander through these messy rooms of love,
astounded by my one. The he. We three.