It doesn't really sound like a love poem . . .

. . . but it's supposed to be. Three years ago today, Dick and I stood on a beach in Cabo San Lucas and pledged our undying love before a minister we didn't know, a nutty, but great photographer and two fisherman. It was the best day of my life. And I'm pretty certain it always will be.

Here's a little poem I wrote about what it's like to love someone so much that it's as scary as it is great.

Dress Rehearsal

One night--

years from now, I pray--

one of us will go to bed

without the other.

I remember asking a woman

who lost her husband what the hardest part was.

“Night time” she said.

“Nights are terrible.”

And I wonder,

what if

you leave

before I do?

I can’t help imagining

lying down on my side of the bed,

leaving room for you on your side

as though you could return.

I would stare,

waiting to see if an invisible you would sit down,

make the bed sigh under your familiar weight,

and then, corrugating the sheets, lay down beside me.

I would hold your pillow and inhale,

filling my lungs until it hurts,

then worry that I would use up

all that’s left of you.

I would lie awake and wait

until morning came

to nudge the living from sleep

so they can make coffee, read the paper,

get the kids ready for school.

Why do I do this to myself?

Why rehearse what will be

the hardest thing I must do

at what will be the loneliest point

I will face?

Because on the nights

I go to bed before you do,

when I draw the shade,

slide underneath the sheets,

pull up the white bedspread,

and run my fingers over its fraying stitches,

it seems wrong

to be alone.

Even though I know,

I’ll hear your footfall

on the stairs before to long.

And sometimes I remember what she said.

“Nights are terrible.”

Then I open a book

and read the same sentence again and again

with intention and still

I don’t know what it said.

So I give up and reach over

to the lamp on the nightstand

and I turn it

off.

In the dark,

I weep

not for what I will lose--

but for what I am lucky enough

to have known.