Overread at Booth 1: Poem "Proposing to my Wife"

Proposing to my Wife


That night I stood before you,
my heart naked like a Neruda poem,
I searched for the words that I had been practicing for days.


I searched for them frantically, feeling as though I
were drowning in the ocean, struggling to break through to the
surface for one gulp of air, as the ship
sank to the obsidian depths, dragging me with it.

I had nothing to say.
My words had no meaning:
they struggled out sideways and sputtering, as
though I were spitting out the spines
of stems of roses that I had cut from a garden that did not belong to me.

Then, to end my stammering, you put one finger to my lips.
You pressed your lips against my ear, and with one word,

one single word, you
dispersed the ocean and
lifted me upward into the clouds of heaven,
to set me down gently upon a stone
among a rose garden that is now our own:

one word,

“yes.”








MR
2018-0318