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.
