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Love is certainly
not
girl’s best friend, glitter pawned
for tears
post-divorce.

It is not awkward
silence
holding its breath between
us, heavier than the other
shoe suspended above
me, ever threatening
to fall.

It isn’t laying my body down
for the sake of relationship
a live carcass
my soul featured as missing–
plastered on cardboard milk cartons and
glanced at during morning coffee
then forgotten.

But
love is

In the six hundred seventy two swings
of your axe, wood split
to stoke our stove
to kindle flames
into fires
inside our walls.

In the forty five thousand nine hundred
minutes spent smoothing
my only flesh
and blood’s auburn curls
while nursing her, singing dimly lit
tunes from Methodist hymnals.

In the three-pound
catfish, wriggling and flailing
its way to your parents’
house. In the smile you
kept while I showed
my prize-willing catch
to your dad, never deflating
my big-fish ego.

Our love is not
effortless.

By Bethany Wallace, 2015