Every Married Person Knows


That Wednesday is the best night

for making the sex. And yes, I am in open

rebellion against the phrase love making

because like my sourdough starter

I feed our desire little bits of sexiness

throughout the week. I’m not writing love notes

on a Thursday I’m pretending our closet

is a post-game locker room and I’m slapping

your butt to say “you’ve got a nice tight end.”

And yes, Friday is the night we attend all of our children’s

sports and you might think that there is no place for sexiness

at an endless intramural sports tournament

and yes, maybe this is the night we should take a break

but after we’ve buckled all of the kids into the minivan

we have approximately twenty seconds before we get back into

the car to say just how scalding hot the nacho cheese was

at the concession stand. You know what I mean, so hot

that an inexperienced tongue might burn but after

all of these years this mouth is fireproof.

We make no concessions on Saturdays and refuse to split up

at the endless birthday parties we ferry our children to.

In the ball pit I’m making the obvious jokes and lets face it

when the balloon artist made you a snake we both knew

what each of us was thinking. Sunday, we prepare for the week

and take our children to the grocery store. There is not a

single piece of meat that doesn’t remind me of you.

Even the imitation protein with names that evoke

the afterlife remind me that I will meat you in the great Beyond.

Mondays always remind me that we will die

together and maybe this is the part of the poem where I steer

dangerously close to making love because it’s almost Wednesday. On

Tuesdays, everything is a blur, and I often come home to something

steadily evaporating in the crock pot. This week has been a slow burn

but we both know that Wednesday is tomorrow and we’ve only got

a few more boxes to check. Tomorrow we will fold the laundry and

dry the dishes. When the kids are finally asleep, you will put on your

tattered house shoes and roll the heavy trash cans

to the curb. In the moonlight the racoons will rip the trash bags apart

but baby, it’s Wednesday and tonight

no one is more animal than us.