The Longest Love Poem I’ve Written

Wellbutrin works wonders

for your ADHD. But you call me

Wellgibson, because I make you

happy. I make you happy––

is there anything left to do

in this life, my love?

I don’t think so.

Once, you drew a line

on the doorframe when you grew

to understand me better. The same day

I wrote you a poem in a patch of light

the sun had left on our wall.

An hour later the light was gone

but the poem remained, a whisper

in the shadows, just like you and I

after the stage lights, alone in our hotel bed,

whispering our favorite lines from all the poems

that fell out of strangers’ mouths by accident

when they were saying hello after the show.

I can’t tour anymore without you.

Something about how you look

driving my minivan. It’s so flirtatious

how you hit, literally hit on

every curb. The fender

is duct taped together in three places.

I don’t mind. Why try to look like I’m not

a fixer upper, when I wouldn’t want to be

anything else? I need a minivan

because three dogs are not enough

and I’m making space for the next one you find

which we both know you will find,

because I pull over when I see a stray dog

but you pull over, learn parkour, scale a building

and pole vault between rooftops, returning

with another furry bundle, freckling you

in fleas. Our dogs are barnacles and I’m a sturdy

canoe, but you’re the dreamboat they cling to

all night long. Even the wild one

who’s no longer here––we see her

ghost on the same days prancing through

our hallways bragging about how good

she has it, how her coffin was a cocoon

and how she’s now a butterfly

in God’s belly. I’ll never forget

how you held her when you let her go

without letting her go, how you clutched

her to your chest the whole ride home

then buried her in our garden

with your bare hands. I know

it still hurts, but it brings me so much

comfort to watch her grow. You’re the best

mother in the world, I suspect

because you learned how to do it

by watching yours. That woman worships you

so completely it’s as if she’s Mary

and you’re a Jewish baby Jesus

with biblical breasts.

The last time we visited your childhood home

I took a photograph of the front door,

your address–your lucky number.

What a coincidence. I only get lucky

when you’re around. Especially when you

plan to do yoga but end up filming yourself

dancing to Beyonce instead. Your hips, my favorite

film festival. Baby watch this watch this

watch this, you say, because you are the champion

of over-doing things. Two weeks locked in our basement

wrapping Christmas gifts, twelve hours

a day. Our closets spilling over

with secondhand wrapping paper you’ve collected

from every gift you’d been given for seven years.

You want neon signs on everything.

You put so many pillows on our couch,

I have to sit on the floor. Which is to say

you ground me. For a while I thought

you were enlightened

until we figured out you have an actual condition

where you don’t know how to worry.

I’m still not convinced there’s a difference.

But just in case, I hope it’s okay if I keep trying

to turn you woo-woo. I just trust peace

is a telephone through which you will always be

able to reach me. And I’ll always need you

to reach me. You know how lonely I get when you fall

asleep before I do. And you always fall asleep

before I do because I’m up all night watching space

documentaries and Youtube videos about how to survive

in the wilderness with nothing but an ax

and a handsaw and your lipstick

on my temple. Thank you for following me

everywhere I go. I don’t mind

that it’s only to put lids on everything I don’t.

What can I say, I’m an open person.

So are you. You don’t just see people at their best.

You see people at the best they haven’t been yet.

Which is why you loved me long before

I loved myself. Thank goodness

I figured that out. Beating yourself up

is never a fair fight, wrote your favorite poet

once. Those gloves fit no one right,

and you always deserved a me

who didn’t have to squint

through bruised eyes to see you clearly.

Right now I’m watching you

outside the window sunbathing

topless in the snow, smelling like the same

tanning lotion my mother wore

when I was just a kid

and she was just a mom who had no idea

I’d grow up to find such a pretty man

of the house. But of course she loves you.

Who couldn’t? You pole dance on the tractor,

mow our lawn in your bikini, roll out a red carpet

to escort the mice back to the pasture, teach spiders

how to weave their webs outside, and the ants—

okay the ants you slaughter with every weapon

you can find, but I forgive you because you

forgive everyone so easily, watching you do it

is like watching paint dry. There’s nothing

to see. Everything is just more colorful after.

Something I never told you about the day you sold

your reliable Toyota for an old convertible so you

could drive me around town so I could be in the world

when I was too sick to be in the world—it mattered

more than you knew because I could not stop

thinking about the fact that you bought a car

that’s not safe to leave the state, the steering wheel

shining like a ring on your hand, a promise

to stay through all of my breakdowns.

I promise that too. I promise to go the distance

with you. This morning while I was trying

to figure out what kind of fish

everyone in our family would be, I asked you

what you thought you were and you said,

very seriously, Hold up, let me google

what the sexiest fish is,

no wait, the most beautiful fish. Oh look

there are angel fish! I am an angel fish!

It stuns me sometimes how well

you know who you are

in spite of the poison in the sea

that has everyone else drowning

in an idea that they aren’t worthy.

Self-hate is an environmental crisis

and you might single-handedly save

the world. You’re even energy efficient,

or you try really hard to be. I estimate you’ve spent

at least 387 hours in just the last two years searching

for sneakers you don’t have to tie

because it takes you so much time

to tie laces. My silver-haired beauty

in Velcro shoes–there is no one like you

anywhere. You mind your own

business. You change your mind as often

as you need to, and you never lie,

which irritates me

because you also edit my poems,

can’t keep that look off your face

when I use adverbs. Baby,

how on earth do you expect me

to not write the word beautifully

while you’re sitting beside me?

But beautifully doesn’t bug you

as much as honestly, which I honestly

begin half of my sentences with

and you’re worried that suggests the other half

of what I say is a lie. But here’s what I figured out

today–I am a liar. I lie all the time.

Remember the other day when I said,

“We will all have to say goodbye sometime.”

That wasn’t true. Saul was right

when he said, ”Only believers in death will die.”

Baby, I have never loved you more than I did

when you asked Liza how it felt to know

she would be leaving the world in just a few days?

I wanted to know so badly, but I was afraid

to ask. She was grateful you did, and how could I ever

fear anything after hearing what she said?

I think everything about you is a gift.

But it wasn’t always like this, was it?

There were many months we were more flammable

than instagrammable, but we were creative

about it, spent an entire summer arguing

via badminton so we could drive the birdie

of blame at each other’s skulls. I was gonna leave

that out of this, but this isn’t only for us.

It’s for everyone we can convince not to wait

for a tragedy to stop calling it zero/zero

and it could so easily be love serving love.

I had no idea how much would change

when all that mattered

became all that mattered.

These days our biggest argument happens

on our daily walks near the lake. I always want to walk

back the same way, which you don’t enjoy.

I like a circle, you say. We can’t agree

because I want to do it all again, see it from another angle.

The back of the coffee line when you didn’t know me

but told me I was ordering the wrong drink.

The back of my hand where I first wrote your name

so I could remember your birthday when we were still friends.

The back of your arms where you tattooed the longitude

and latitude of where we first danced. The birds flying

backwards back to the cold just like you racing home

from your lunch in the sun when I called to tell you

the doctor spotted something on the cat scan.

When I call cancer the Big C,

you are the only one

who knows I mean the big ocean

where we met our own Titanic and didn’t sink.

You even convinced me it was a good idea

for us to dress up as Jack and Rose

on Halloween. Though my baldness

was in position to pass up an opportunity

to wear a wig, I was a bit nervous to play the part

of the guy who dies. But I wasn’t really Jack,

was I, Baby? I was Rose. And your heart

was the door that opened so wide

it tore off its hinges and kept me afloat.

Some days you even managed

to convince me that to let you take care of me

was a kind of chivalry. It was very badass

of me to puke in front of you when I had no hair

for you to hold back. What can I say? I’m finally tough

enough to let someone see me on the inside.

Thank you knowing you had to be the one

to tell me what they found when I woke up

from surgery. Anyone who thinks poetry is frivolous

has never needed someone to tell them

something unspeakably hard, beautifully.

My guardian angel. My guardian angel fish.

Do you know that happened a year

after our camping trip where we blew up our bed

and carried it to the water, floated on our backs

in the middle of that Rocky Mountain lake,

cupped in the palm infinity.

You and I will never leave that place.

Just like I will never finish writing this,

my longest love poem, for which this

is only the prologue, Baby. I’ve barely begun.

Love,

Andrea Wellgibson 🖤

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