The Story of a Marriage
We are 20. We are new to each other, and enchanted, and enchanting, and unlike anyone else we’ve ever known. We are full of expectations we cannot meet and assumptions we cannot justify. We have adventures. We see the Milky Way for the first time, splashed over a silent sky, arched over a languid lake. We disappoint each other. We delight each other. We forget to return our family’s phone calls. We laugh at bad puns and low budget movies. We rent apartments. We birth small souls that break our bodies and crush our sleep. They shock us and baffle us, and we wonder how to sustain their precious lives and fill their eager mouths. We muddle, and we flail. We stand, and we rally. We become oaks for our children. We understand love differently.
We are 30. We watch innocence slough from our skin, its cells skidding under the furniture like lost puzzle pieces and building blocks. We work. We work hard. We labor for stability and learn it’s impermanent—we ache for certainty and learn it’s impossible. We buy a home. We consider what home means. We think the best of each other. We think the worst of each other. We shout. We kiss. We tell the truth. Mostly. We are oaks for our children. For them, we stand straight and constant, though we fear they are hollowing our insides. We question how to raise them. We wonder what they are becoming. We wonder what we are becoming. We crave youth. We crave freedom. We hear the minutes tick and feel the years slip. We understand time differently.
We are 40. We are scarred from battle and boredom and babies. We have brokered deals between us, deals that would be incomprehensible to others if we were to share them. But we won’t share them. We have broken each other, and we cannot put ourselves back together in the same way. We hear each other’s words before we speak them; we know each other’s thoughts. We lose people we love. We are oaks for our children, who have become beautiful beyond our dreams. They launch from our branches, and sometimes they phone us. We seek meaning and truth and learn they are inside us. We turn our gaze inward, and, there, we find each other. We are intertwined by root, interwoven by branch, interlaced by heart. We understand life differently.
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Dheepa R. Maturi writes to explore the surprising ways in which cultures and traditions interact over time. Her poetry has appeared in The Fourth River, New York Quarterly, Crosswinds, Every Day Poems, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Her ghazal ‘The Ancient Dance’ was featured in the textbook How to Write a Form Poem. Dheepa lives with her family in Indianapolis.