Out Loud

If I could stand apart from my morning--look into it from outside, as if through a window--how familiar the scene would be. True, the room is different, but the bed is the same. The books. You reading aloud. And us. Different, certainly; older, but also still there and together, legs vined around one another, growing toward either shelter or erosion.

I love you.

And I even say it.

But, I say other things too. At dinner last night, all of these words tumbled out of me. They fell out like marbles, and the minute they skittered away, I wanted to scramble around, find them all, bury them again inside my pockets. Leave it to me to spill my guts and cry over the three forks necessary to get through the "Waltz of Appetizers." In front of the wine sommelier, our two waiters, the people at the next table, and the bread guy, there I was, wiping my eyes, covering the table with my thousands of perfect, round reasons for you not to love me back.