Having to Live With

Photo by Natalia Sobolivska on Unsplash

Sometimes it’s your sleeping form next to me
your fingers curled at the nape of my neck,
sometimes your back I love for its freckles and moles
that only I can see.
“I love your touch,” I say.
“Good,” you say. “You have to live with it.”

Or it’s you correcting me on some
knee-jerk response I’ve made to the evening news.
Or you bringing me toast spread with jam you’ve made
from the concord grapes I planted three years ago
with no plan in mind but childhood memories
of tart skins—which you bring to purpose now.

And sometimes all these tiny miracles disappear
from the skein of sensations and viny intricacies
into something simpler beyond that fills me
with wonder at what I have
to live with.

David Morse

David Morse has been a teacher, investigative journalist, and activist on behalf of environment and human rights. His novel, The Iron Bridge, is centered on eighteenth century Quaker ironmasters. He traveled to Sudan in 2005 and 2007 focused on the genocide.

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