Gold Bands on Arthritic Fingers

It was a birthday-candle strength that brought him here, bone-marrow reality and gold bands on arthritic fingers. It was stardust love, ushered by asteroids, tide pools and baby’s breath, miracles and malt mistakes, and here he is on the other side of echoes, fifty year old vows that he still intends to keep. I watch him as he feeds his wife, creamed corn brokenness and mashed potato depletion, his hand bringing the spoon to those lips that he kissed; he remembers hurled insults, red lipstick, long Thursdays, her lilting laugh, her camera-shy smiles. He alone now vaults the memories, her wrinkled face in his wrinkled hands, dust to dust, dependent to dependent, but she is beauty to beauty, and she’s all he can see. She hasn’t spoken in days, doesn’t have much left to say, but she knows who he is and her baby-blue eyes show it. Lantern-light and Missouri dawn, he reminds her of all she’s ever been and done, and he kisses her forehead like they’re alone in their bed, and she smiles to herself without a single word said. Loyalty that pleas the fifth, a meal a day he spends with her still in his arms, and I realize more how in love I am with you when I think to myself, “I know for mine, I’d do the same.”