The Wife I Get to Have

Other men describe their wives like cars they've owned too long— familiar, reliable, the excitement worn to a pleasant hum. I refuse. You are not a pleasant hum. You are the song that starts quiet and gets louder every year. I watch you across the kitchen and I still— still, after all this time— lose my train of thought when you do that thing with your hair that you don't know you're doing. You are stronger than you think. I know this because I've seen the weight you carry and I've seen the face you wear while carrying it and they don't match and that gap is where your courage lives. I married a woman who makes the hard things look effortless and the effortless things look like love. The bills get paid. The kids get fed. The house holds together. And you stand in the center of it like a person who built a world and forgot to put herself in it. So here: I'm putting you in. Right here. In this poem that is about you and only you and has no point except to say: I see you. I see the work. I see the tired. I see the woman behind the wife behind the mother behind the answer to everyone else's question. And she is the most remarkable person I know. I just wanted to make sure she knew.