We were newlyweds, living in a grungy apartment.
Each morning, I would wake before her. I would pass my morning hours writing poetry on a yellow legal pad, sipping coffee.
Mostly, I’d write the godawful things you’d expect newlyweds to write. I’m talking painfully corny stuff.
One such poem read:
“Together, the two of us,
“In thought, and deed, and breath, and heart,
“Shall never be lacerated apart.”
Gag me with number-two pencil. “Lacerated?” What kind of a dork uses that word? In fact, I’m not certain this verb works in this particular case.
LACERATE [verb: las-uh-reyt] lac·er·at·ed, lac·er·at·ing
1. to tear; mangle; rip. Example: “Hey dude, that poem you wrote really freakin’ lacerated.”
My wife saved all my crummy poems in a shoebox, and today they reside in a storage closet.
Anyway, when we first married, we lived in an apartment that smelled like dead squirrels. I am not being figurative. I mean our apartment actually had a nest of decomposing squirrels above our master bedroom.
The place was tiny, and about as ugly as homemade soap. The tenant before us had painted the walls speckled black. Sherwin Williams officially titled this color “Seasick Granite®.”
Our building sat across the street from a Waffle House and an ice cream shop. And this is why we gained nearly fifty pounds within our first year of marriage.
We never went to the movies because we didn’t have the money. We ate Hamburger Helper without hamburger.
We saved our cash for a new window unit AC—our air conditioner was on the fritz. The thing would only work on days of the week beginning with “R.”
On weekends, we ate donuts. It was our simple ritual. Krispy Kreme was only a stone’s throw from us, and when the hot-and-ready light would glow, we ate donuts like they needed the boxes back.
She told me all her stories. I told her mine. You can do a lot of soul-searching over a dozen glazed.
My professional life was non-existent, I took whatever jobs I could get. She worked as a preschool teacher, or in a kitchen.
We learned things during that first year. Important things.
We learned how to argue in the middle of Winn-Dixie, how to attend three Thanksgivings in eight hours. How to share a sunset. How to read in bed with a flimsy battery-powered book light.
We learned how to travel together with paper maps. And after years of practice, we finally learned how to make a bed together without me getting assaulted.
We learned how to hold each other when loved ones die. We learned how to sit together in the den without talking—me reading a magazine, her playing a crossword puzzle.
We learned how to wring our hands in hospital waiting rooms. We learned how bury dogs with a shovel and a bedsheet.
We learned how to make a life together.
A lot has changed since those days, but I still wake early in the mornings to write. I don’t use a legal pad anymore, I use a laptop.
This morning, however, I did not write. Instead, I sifted through our storage closet. I found things. An old coffee-tin containing a collection of legal-pad poems, and the picture of a young man and his new bride in their first apartment.
He’s holding her. She’s holding him. They are young. Their skin is smooth. I wish I could tell you how much I love these two people in the picture.
I wish you could see their faces, their punch-drunk smiles. You can tell they belong together. It’s as though nothing bad in this life can ever touch them. As though the two of them, in thought, and deed, and breath, and heart, shall never be lacerated apart.
I guess the word is growing on me.
Questions: SeanDietrich@gmail.com
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Originally published on Sean’s website. Republished here with permission.
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