"Anniversary" by Lynne Thompson

Anniversary

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
~ Vera Pavlova

I am not his wife and I and haven’t been
for more than thirteen thousand days.

The vows we haven’t taken? —
more powerful than for richer . . . in sickness . . .

We have known and not known, each
to each, from honky-tonks to strip malls &

we still gaze upon our once-beautiful bodies, grateful
for presbyopia

& our laughter, less bankrupt now, is more
than full and from the depths of our bellies.

There are girls and boys unborn to us
who lead lucky lives —

if we had had and loved them, we would have
turned them pox and phantasmagorical.     

We are believers or have never been. Weaned on
no faith, we trust in a meander of smoke.

There has been pain, so now healing
relies on the needle, the inhaler.

We have been less to each other, then much
less, for unnumbered cycles of moons

and despite our ravenous sex play.
We’re trying to outlive ash and consequence

but this never-ending will always be the excuse
for spitting into heaven.

Lynne thompson

Lynne Thompson is the author of Beg No Pardon, Start With A Small Guitar, and, most recently, Fretwork, selected by Jane Hirshfield for the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Most recently, her poem "She talk like this 'cause me Mum born elsewhere, say" was selected for Best American Poetry 2020; other work has appeared in Ploughshares, Nelle, Colorado Review, and New England Review, among others.

Headshot: Jacqueline Legazcue

Photo Credit: Staff