Wedding vowels

I always used to think wedding vows were wedding "vowels," like A, E, I, O, and U. It didn't make sense, but when you're a child, the things adults choose to do with their time never make a lot of sense, anyway.

 Since I love silly things and words and letters and poetry, though, I've decided to compose my own set of wedding vowels.

But don't worry, I'm still a cynic!



A
We will always do what's best for our marriage:
always sit beside each other on city busses,
always add the other's requests to our own grocery lists -
even on the day before thanksgiving,

when it's hard to push a cart without hitting an old man.
Or a shelf trembling from too many boxes of stuffing
being grabbed from it at once.

We'll always do what's best for our marriage,

until the day we need to do what's best for us, 
as whole people
who sometimes need to put a marriage second. For a 
sick sibling, for a trip for work, or for some time alone.

E

Beautiful people are everywhere.

Marriage is not a drain for the hormones
in our bodies,
the serotonin in our heads,
the devices between our legs.

Marriage is a sign that says stop!-
Just as Diana Ross used to sing-
in the name of love. 

Love the one you're with, 
love the one you're with, 
love the one you're with,
love the one you're with.



I

If one of us gets a stomach bug,
even if we're scared,
we'll never stay in a motel.

If we get into an argument,
we'll never be resentful; we'll try not to
yell; and we'll choose our battles wisely:

There are things more important than who
does more to clean the kitchen,
who does more to raise the baby,
and who said the right answer first while
watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

O

Bishop wrote One Art because she knew
losing is the one thing we do,
over and over again, until even our
own lives have been lost from our bodies,


and found in another, if you're buddhist. 
Or found in the sky, if you believe in heaven. 
Or scattered about the earth, in the energy of it all, 
if you're a scientist who knows nothing is 
created or destroyed. 


We'll lose things, too, eventually. 
Our vision, our hair, our memory - 
maybe the things that made us like 
one another - those could leave us, too.

If we know this, though, maybe we can
be prepared. To love through all the losses. 
Or to become a loss ourselves,
if we find that leaving is the better way to love.  

U

Until death do us part.

Or until we change in opposite directions,
and we start to find we're better off
as just ourselves,

not being one flesh anymore,
like the Bible said we'd become.

But flesh hurts to be torn, and even
Eng and Chang Bunker had to be surgically
removed from one another
(but Eng refused - for love), 

and there's no way to take back all the years
we'll spend - no memory-removing device,
except time - with its horse and carriage to pull it
sweetly along -
to make it so we never met.

In a way, this is permanent;
you are permanent,

until death do us part.