Emily C. Knight

Emily C. Knight Poems

The Best Poem Of Emily C. Knight

Thread Of Life

Would I trade the wrinkles of your eye for the million dollars which would fix all your problems and mine?
Would I forfeit your injured past to make your slate so clean-clean for me to write our story on?
Your years, do I wish I had them in my journals, documented, layed out and catalogued?
Would it have been me instead of her to break you?

But you're not broken-do you remember the night I told you that? Not forever.

The hidden scar in your hair, grown over now with the thick Roman God curls that crown your too large forehead. I ask about your arm-some deep gash healed over now. You don't remember. How could you not remember? -When I know every pore on your face-even the one in your beard prone to problems.

A boy smiles at me in the grocery store-the questioning, searching eyes. I fit the bill, do I? I don't see him, though. I see that your favorite coffee creamer is on sale. How dangerous the ease with which I am yours.

At the gym, you work hard to recover your youth-tales of males and feats of strength and stupidity. The guy on the treadmill in front of me has calves that flex tan and strong, but the softness of your inner thigh makes me stumble in my run.

The woven strands of you in me are twisted like our legs in bed.

Do I wish our future would hurry up and get here, all the dreams I dream for us? All the mountains I've mapped for us? The current mire we're stuck in seems to eat away the magic. And what magic is there really but love? What is God but love? What is creation but love? How I want to have your babies! To see some incomprehensible fruit of you and me! Images float by of some child not yet made with your deep brown curls, blue green earth deep eyes, and sunshine smile. I can hear you singing downstairs to one of our favorite songs, playing with your power tools to fix a broken crucifix, carving Jesus' arm out of scraps.

Is this the thread of life? Woven in the coffee and the dreams, the wrinkles and the stumbles, the impatience and the longing, killing cockroaches and making art from fantasy.

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