Brooks on marriage

3

days until I return home

T. is now trying to decide whether to pick me up at the airport on Friday night -- instead of flying directly home, I’m meeting him in CA, for a friend’s wedding, and he flies in a few hours before me. Considering I haven’t seen hime for two weeks, and am coming back for good after an absence of 3 months, it occurs to me that perhaps this shouldn’t be a hard choice for him.

The boy’s got no feeling for romance.

And here’s what Gwendolyn Brooks has to say on what a marriage (in my writing, I use ‘marriage’ as a shorthand for ‘marriage or other longterm relationship’) is really like. I don’t know why this resonates so with me, but I think it would with T. also.

WHEN YOU HAVE FORGOTTEN SUNDAY: THE LOVE STORY

That the war would be over before they got to you;

--And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,

And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday -

When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,

Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon

Looking off down the long street
To nowhere,

Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation

And if-Monday-never-had-to-come

When you have forgotten that, I say,

And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,

And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;

And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,

That is to say, went across the front-room floor to the

Pink-spotted table in the southwest corner

To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles

Or chicken and rice

And salad and rye bread and tea

And chocolate chip cookies --

I say, when you have forgotten that,

When you have forgotten my little presentiment

And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,

And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end

Bright bedclothes,

Then gently folded into each other --

When you have, I say, forgotten all that,

Then you may tell,

Then I may believe

You have forgotten me well.

Posted by dichroic at March 27, 2001 10:31 AM