Honeymoon

Dorianne Laux

We didn't have one, unless you count Paris,

20 years later, after we'd almost given up on the idea.

We'd imagined one, long nights beneath

a warm celestial sky; him growing his beard,

me in a silk turquoise robe, floating, billowing,

on a deserted beach foraging for whole sand dollars,

jelly fish washed up on the shore, their glittering insides

visible, still pulsing through flesh made of glass,

but it never happened. We had to work through

our vacations, refinance the house, find someone

to cut down the cedar that threatened to bury us

with each storm. We wanted to make up

for the wedding, or lack of one, the granite

courthouse steps, the small room with a desk,

the flimsy document stamped with a cheap gold seal.

Even then we meant to have a party on the deck,

cheese and crackers, fruit plates, sparkling

grape cider in plastic cups, our friends on the lawn

calling you the Big Kahuna, me Mrs. Dynamite,

me calling you my Sweet Dragon, you calling me

your little Red Corvette. Instead, time found a way

to demand each minute, until one night,

after you'd gotten a small windfall in the mail,

you turned to me and said, I'm going to take you to Paris,

me in my ratty robe and floppy slippers, you

in your flannel pj bottoms and black wife beater,

muting the clicker when I said "What?"

and saying it again. Then we were there,

in our 60s, standing below the dire Eiffel Tower,

its 81 stories of staircases we couldn't possibly climb,

its 73 thousand tons of puddled iron, you

taking my picture for posterity, me

kissing you beneath the pathway of arched trees,

our voices echoing against the six million skulls

embedded inside the stone catacombs, me

saying, I guess you weren't kidding, you

taking my hand in the rain.