"But I know how much you love it when I write about you," he teases, squeezing my fingers. "So this is my heart given to you in the words I wrote."
His smile fades until his mouth rests in a sober line.
"My heart given to you completely," he adds so softy, I'm not sure the congregation hears before he launches into what he has prepared.
"It's called ‘Still.'"
You ask me today if I love you,
if I take you as my own to have and to hold,
and my heart replies yes.
Always, evermore, even after.
Still.
Not just today before a crowd,
but when we are alone, you and I,
through years, through pain,
My heart will answer again and again, still.
Ask me in a million seconds, ask me in a billion years,
Do you love me?
And I will say still.
Ask me when we toil, when we rest,
when we fuss and fight.
With the taste of anger burning my lips,
I will say still.
Ask me when your belly is full like the moon,
and our love has stretched your body with my child,
leaving your skin, once flawless,
now silvered, traced, scarred,
I will worship you.
My eyes will never stray.
My heart will never wander,
gladly leashed to you all my days.
I am fixed on you.
Our love is a great river,
the Amazon, the Nile, the river Euphrates,
and my heart is a violent churning
in my chest,
swimming upstream,
defying every odd, accepting any dare
To reach you.
To rush you,
to hold you,
to keep you.
You ask me if I love you?
God, yes.
My lover, you are the single star
in a universe void before you came.
And when the years have passed,
and we have watched a thousand sunsets,
and we are bent,
our bodies crooked with age
ask me again.
In the twilight,
in the shadow of the life we have shared,
ask me if I love you,
and my heart will answer
before my lips can part.
My love, my life,
my heart never left your hands.
Always, evermore, even after.
Still.
Behind me, I hear sniffing. I'm aware that the audience is moved by Grip's words, but they cannot feel a fraction of the emotion drowning my senses until he is the only thing I can perceive with any clarity. Every other person, every other sound and sight is mist. The power, the passion of his words turned on me has left me undone, unraveled, a ribbon unspooled. I barely hear the words the preacher speaks, legally linking us together. It's such a formality. The words we spoke to one another are what joined us. Our words, our wills bind us, and even with so many looking on, clapping, cheering that we are now husband and wife, I can't make myself look away from him, and he can't tear his eyes away from me. We are caught in this most exquisite intimacy, and neither of us wants out. We want to revel in it, to revel in each other, for the rest of our days.
Part II
"Dwell in possibility."
– Emily Dickinson
28
Grip
The darkness is so deep, so dense, I can't see my hand in front of my face.
"For the record," I tell Bristol from the passenger seat of her car, "when I said we should use blindfolds, I was thinking kinkier, maybe with some cuffs . . . maybe some anal."
"Anal?" Though I can't see her face, her voice sounds horrified. "I told you your dick's too big for anal. Not happening."
"I'm gonna take that as a backhanded compliment." I laugh, reaching up to touch the thick cotton shrouding my eyes.
"Don't you dare take that blindfold off," Bristol orders. "And you can take it as a compliment, insult, I don't care, as long as we're clear that your big dick is not going in my tiny asshole."
She says that now, but over the last year of marriage, there hasn't been much I haven't been able to persuade her to do.
Except anal. It's a work in progress.
"Are we there yet?" I ask, tuning all my other senses to the environment to figure out where "there" is.
"Are you seven years old? We've been driving for a grand total of ten minutes . . . but, yes, we're almost there."
"Is this my anniversary present?" I lean back in the bucket seat of Bristol's convertible. "Because I read that year one is paper. Is this paper?"
"Um . . . in a way." The mischief in Bristol's voice tells me nothing except that she enjoys having the upper hand-for once.
We come to a stop, and my senses automatically go on higher alert. I sniff the air, wondering if we're going to a restaurant.
"You told me your mom says you have extra senses from growing up in Compton," Bristol says, a smugness in her voice that I fully plan to fuck out of her when we get home. "How are all those extra senses serving you right about now?"
I sniff again, pulling in deeper draws of air.
"I sense that you're wet and you want me to fuck you," I say with a straight face. "How am I doing so far?"
The silence that follows my outrageous comment has my shoulders shaking because even though I was just joking, I know I'm totally right.
"Bastard," Bristol mutters before I hear the driver's door open and slam closed.
My head jerks around when my door swings open, and I do smell her. The unique clean scent that is Bristol's invades my nostrils, and I want to sniff her like a stalker as she leads me by the arm along what I think is a sidewalk. Don't ask me how I know, but when you grow up with so little grass and nothing but asphalt, your feet know sidewalk when they meet it. A bell dings over a door, and I'm pretty sure . . .
"I smell Mexican."
The blindfold is wrenched from my eyes, and I come face to face with Mateo.
"You're half right," he says with a grin. "The other half is black, on my mama's side. Blaxican!"
I glance around the tattoo shop where I've always gotten my ink. Bristol is already seated, a satisfied smirk on her face and an empanada halfway to her mouth.
"Mateo told me his dad has a taco shop around the corner," Bristol says around a mouthful. "And I thought this would be a perfect meal for our anniversary."
"When you said you'd handle our first anniversary dinner," I say, sitting down in the chair beside her, "I kind of envisioned something a little more upscale."
I shoot my friend a remorseless glance. "No offense, Matty."
"I got you, ese." He leans against the counter that holds the cash register. "But your wife knows what she wants."
Wife.
Bristol has been my wife for a year. It feels like yesterday and it feels like forever, like we're just getting started, and like we know each other more deeply than I ever thought possible. I want to slow the hours down because it's going too fast. One day I'll wake up and be at the end of this journey, like Mrs. O'Malley, and even after a lifetime with Bristol, I'll bargain with God for one more day.
"I had an idea for an anniversary gift to each other." Bristol wipes the corners of her mouth with a paper napkin. "Something that will last all our lives."
"I'm guessing it's a tattoo," I say, looking around Matty's tattoo parlor.
"You're very astute without the blindfold. I'm almost done eating so I can go first."
I frown because she has one beautiful tattoo on her shoulder of the Neruda line that galvanized our connection years ago, and I need to sign off on anything else. I mean, I have tattoos all over, but I'm a lot more careful with Bristol's body than I am with my own.
"What kind of tattoo are you getting?"
"You mean what kind of tattoo are we getting?" She reaches into her purse and hands me a sketch. "This one."
It's a pair of hands, one masculine and one feminine. Banding each ring finger is Matty's trademark calligraphy of the word still. The letters wrap around each finger, sketched to look like delicate vine.
"You like it?" Bristol asks, her voice soft, uncertain.
After the wedding, she requested that I give her my vows, my poem STILL, in writing. I know she added it to a box where she keeps our memories-the leather book of Neruda poetry, the tarnished whistle from the carnival, and now the vows I wrote for her. I know STILL holds significance, but I never saw this coming.
"You want to tattoo this on our fingers?" I ask, just to make sure I'm clear. "The word still?"
"Yeah. I have no problem making this permanent on my skin." She smiles, but bites her bottom lip. "Unless our first year has made you reconsider forever."
As an answer, I slip my wedding band off my finger and into my pocket then turn to Matty, who's already prepping his ink and needles.
"All right, partner, do your worst."
I've gotten used to the discomfort that comes with tattooing-hell, I got my first one when I was only fourteen. Amir and I were Matty's guinea pigs, and he had to fix that first one-a sadly disfigured angel-years later, after his skills improved. Bristol, though, has only gotten one tat, and she winces at the sharp needle pumping ink into her skin. Matty's fast, though, and as gentle as he can be. After a couple of hours, we have matching tattoo bands on our ring fingers, not huge, but present enough to see even under our wedding rings. Matty has cleaned the tats and is prepping for his next customer while we eat the last of our cold empanadas and drink flat beer in the back room that serves as kitchen, office, and occasional bedroom for Matty and his staff.