You Are the Penultimate Love of My Life

I want to spend a lot but not all of my years with you.

We’ll talk about kids

but make plans to travel.

I will remember your eyes

as green when they were gray.

Our dogs will be named For Now and Mostly.

Sex will be good but next door’s will sound better.

There will be small things.

I will pick up your damp towel from the bed,

and then I won’t.

I won’t be as hot as I was

when I wasn’t yours

and your hairline now so

untrustworthy.

When we pull up alongside a cattle car

and hear the frightened lows,

I will silently judge you

for not immediately renouncing meat.

You will bring me wine

and notice how much I drink.

The garden you plant and I plant

is tunneled through by voles,

the vowels

we speak aren’t vows,

but there’s something

holding me here, for now,

like your eyes, which I suppose

are brown, after all.

Copyright Credit: Rebecca Hazelton, “You Are the Penultimate Love of My Life” from Vow. Copyright © 2013 by Rebecca Hazelton. Reprinted by permission of Cleveland State University Press Poetry Center.

Source: Vow (Cleveland State University Press Poetry Center, 2013)