This Much is True

I was thirty-five when we started dating
His tongue
Like a razor when he spoke
Yet so soft
Yet so gentle
When he kissed me
(much like his heart)
And while I pushed
And pushed and pushed
He pulled
He pulled me into him
And he peeled me
Away from myself

I remember telling him
“It seems as though people
are always coming and going;
No one ever wants to stay”
He yelled at me
with his tongue sharpened like a whip
“Who in their right mind would stay?
You make it so hard to get off the front porch
and no one wants to sit on your front porch,
especially when there’s a constant storm around you”
And of course I did what I always do
I called him an idiom
and cracked a joke about the
Wizard of Oz
(or some bullshit like that)
But he had a point and I knew it
I knew it because I felt it
So.
I invited him in.

He’s past the couch
but not quite to the bedroom yet-
I am a work in progress
He knows this
Because he is too

And as I sit here on his own couch
Staring at the ceiling fan
That makes me nearly as dizzy
as he does
I want so much to tell him
He is the best thing about me
But I can’t do it
Because it is a lie
If he and I were to part ways
Today
Let it be said
Right here, right now
I’d be no worse for wear
because I am now aware
that the best thing about me
is myself
He knew this even before I did
He has shown this to me and
for some reason
I believe him