In Sickness, In Health: Poetry, Prose, and Song of a Marriage
When we say those vows, we only imagine health.
Sickness is a faraway mind-photo; an idea.
Long into the future, where, white-haired and stooped,
she helps him with a tie clip—when with
shaking hands, still strong and firm, he holds her steady as they
hobble together on tree-lined cement walks,
passing houses with children playing in yards. Our mind photos
saw our elderly selves, leaning into each other as we walked--
—we could not have seen my illness,
lurking like a demon, around the first corner.
How could we, when we both should be
vibrant with life?
I married a husband, not a caregiver—
I wanted to protect him from my pain.
With love, I put up a wall, wanting him
free of obligation—
wanting him to feel
he had a wife, not a patient. The wall was
opaque; he couldn’t see me through it.
Too tall to climb, too smooth to scale—but
my wall of love turned into a divide, isolating him from
my pain, yes, but also from me. His eyes were
red, face ashen and slack the morning he told me
the wall I’d made to shield him
was killing him inside. He said if I must
walk through fire, he would rather be
seared with me, seared to me,
than untouched in isolation, alone, “in health.”
So, we walk together, he and I, the fires of
“in sickness” blazing, and we are happy,
even amid the shudderings of pain.
We rejected being “two” when we said, “I do”
and our “one flesh” melts from our bones,
flames sizzle and consume—and we are
unable to distinguish where my broiled skin begins,
and his charred flesh ends.
Hardly romantic.
Weddings, romance call for flowers,
soft-music-love-makings, murmured
sweetnesses into pleasure-dazed ears—all these
conjured at an altar of promise—for there is nothing
softly musical or sweetnesses to be found “in sickness;”
love and vows made with bright faces before
the eyes of loved ones, the heavens, and the gods
don’t invite notions of blistering torment—firestorms
and scorched footpaths would surely melt
together-forever-ness-romance into a fragile, ashen heap
to be blown away by the first surly wind.
But I am here to tell you they do not turn to ash.
The fires transform fragile-cheeked blooms and
fleeting-romance-dazed gazes into something that
cannot be scoured away, burned away, or
scraped away with the sharpest paring knife.
It cannot be dissolved or recalled,
even by angry and vengeful gods.
So I tear down my wall, and our love walks
through the blazing inferno.
We shed skin and
bleed and weep together;
our Love, seared into our very beings,
becoming holy unto itself--
It is the altar
where
the gods themselves go
to worship,
sanctify,
and pray.
--J.A. Carter-Winward (c)
