I love you for the Los Angeles sky that swelled up like a bruise
the night we got drunk for the first time on pina coladas,
for the trees whose rings we counted for six hours in an effort
to determine how many other trees had been in a relationship
with them. I don’t intend to write you any poems about
shared coffee cups or banana bread in the morning,
because I’m hoping that simple honesty will be enough.
When my mother’s belly was cut open like a gutted shark,
I came out screaming, I came out speaking.
They said I cracked one of her ribs with the pressure
of my wail. Bloody and bruised, my umbilical cord was slashed
like a car tire, so don’t underestimate my strength.
I was already “going through things" straight from the womb.
I love you for the eyes that turn orange like lanterns
in the fall, and the chipped part of your left tooth
that was permanently shaved off like wood carvings
by a baseball accident when you were twelve.
I hope that our separate therapists never turn into
marriage counselors, and that we never hold each other’s mittens
when we mean to hold the hands beneath them instead.
I love you for telling me that when we have a child,
she will light candles in the walls of my stomach
so we can track her journey through the dark.
And if she’s anything like you, she will come out
of the darkness alive and smiling.