Thank you for marrying me

Dear Evan

Dear Evan,

It’s been seven years but I feel like maybe I have loved you my whole life,

like those moments when I was quiet and felt a shift in my spirit, from alien to human, cosmic to warm, crackling fireplace, 

it was because somehow I knew I would eventually end up here, with you. Somehow, I was comforted that,

despite the tearing and sharp grief of life, home was on the way. You were on the way,

the man who hums while he takes out the trash, and never stops trying to learn new things. Cookbooks and woodwork and body building, 

poetry, prayer, stained glass, and kites. You built me a kite. You made me dinner. You wrote a song. You wrote a book. 

You are wonderful to watch. And even more wonderful to love and be loved by, our children bask in the security of your love,

giggling at the dinosaurs you set on the windowsill after they go to sleep, so they can be surprised by joy in the morning, 

and I am finally able to set down my sadness and paint again. I painted for months that first year we were married,

Do you remember? Acrylic midwestern farms-scapes with a forever sky. You bought me an easel. I only took breaks for coffee,

and yet you think sometimes that I want more than this, more than everything I prayed for? I know we have too many books and boxes 

Old sweaters, and we probably watch too much TV for people with this many books, but I’ll never forget the month we spent 

painting the walls of that old Baptist church, because when we dream together, Sunday school rooms become cathedrals, 

closets become reading nooks, documentaries and chips on the couch become the best date of my life, and 

I can see hope around every formerly-haunted corner. “Thank you,” you whisper to me in the dark of early morning, “for marrying me.” 

“Thank you for marrying me,” I whisper back, putting the baby down in his bedside bassinet, while you shuffle downstairs to make the coffee. 

I have never been happier.