The Fine Print

The agreement was not to write about you on the blog.
The fine print was:

I could write about you elsewhere:
In publications
In my journals
Once, I stapled a poem about you to a telephone pole
At a train station.
For all the commuters to see.
For everyone with somewhere better to be
To stop and read how I felt about you.

The fine print was:

If I could not write about you, I could not love you.

I have violated the fine print.

Your ink has stained everything.
So, who can draw the line of what is or is not about you?

One day, you were slicing an apple in my kitchen,
You put the un-eaten half into the fridge.

The next day, the main character of my book
pulled a half-eaten apple out of her fridge and
I know she is eating your apple.

Loving you is wonderful, you said,
But sometimes it worries me.

Maybe if you read it all, if you saw it,
The smudged lines, The black fingerprints,
Maybe if you watched Sterling finish your apple,
You wouldn’t worry so much.

One day we will be old,
All the ink will have bled into the folds
Around our eyes
All the laugh lines
I drew on you will be stained burgundy,
And maybe we aren’t alone,

Maybe, I can show them to our child and say,
I wrote those lines onto your father’s face,
By breaking his rules
For the sake of making him happy.