I Wonder What a Thousand Feels Like

The speedometer cruises

Foot sitting softly on the pedal

Accelerating gently

Oh so gently!

Moving forward through daily life

Cruise control keeps you constrained

0 and 25 miles per hour

No words exchanged as we fall asleep

It’s just after nine o’clock

We lie next to each other, annoyed by warm breadths

Barely indulging in life, barely experiencing each other, barely moving,

At just two miles per hour

Leave for work with a peck on the lips –

The kind one might grace a grandmother’s cheek with –

Ups the speed to five

Garage door opening in the late afternoon after a long day

Lips brush, once again, against mine

Six

Folding the kids in your arms

Twenty-one

Damn. What that must feel like.

That first sip of wine after a hell-of-a week

Seventy-five

The sweet taste of triumph and victory and success

And letting go of drama at work and kids’ whines and unreturned phone calls from friends

That second sip

(Even) sweeter than the first

Steel-aged Chardonnay with magical powers

Lifting the weight of life from your weary shoulders

And your laughter becomes giddy again

As you zoom along at 90 miles per hour.

Again I wonder – what that must feel like.

That smile still planted on your face

Still talking, your words soon drift off in the distance…

Another night when I know what two feels like

Excitement peaks in your voice unexpectedly –

Friends calling, needing a girls night

A smile stretches from ear to ear

As you zoom throughout our home, excitedly; over 85 miles per hour.

Funny stories

Pouring wine

Jokes about the husbands

The giggle bug jumping in and out

Laughter so infection it lasts for days,

Even as you return to the monotony of married life

I cry a little bit inside as you make plans of hot tubs, wine pairings, staying up past midnight

I know you will come home exhausted –

Your voice hoarse from laughing so hard

Your face aching from smiling even harder still

Perhaps a bruise on your thigh from a fall

The story only your friends find funny

Bags under your eyes

Coming down off a high –

And damn what I wouldn’t give to experience one thousand miles per hour with you.

Laughing, uncontrollably at the humor of favorite movie lines;

Glasses clank glasses and bottles of wine.

Dancing to music that does not play;

Regaling each other with our firsts –

First kiss first dance first fight and how silly it is now

The time we did that thing in that place with those people watching.

Pop! goes another bottle of wine

This time, the special wine

We swore we’d only open to celebrate something special

Like a thou-?

Experiencing life with me.

With me,

While on a high.

Hearts racing at a thousand.

I wonder if that is what it feels like.

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