Benjamin Garcia

Keeping Home

Together, we almost compete with the chores
of keeping home. But this isn’t what we intended
years ago when we said to each other “you complete me.”
We got monkey’s pawed in love, you see.
Well, mostly you. You have a large
heart. It sounds sweet unless it’s
a doctor who says it. Your cardiologist said “at least
we can rule out pregnancy,” you said “unless
we count the agita, ulcer, kidney stone, take
your pick. This sucks. We’re falling apart
growing old together.” Somewhere between
the aisle with orthopedic inserts and the one with
hemorrhoid cream, fine, my love, I see what you mean.
But we are growing old, and we are growing
together, like the wild vine along our fence
that, nameless, appeared to have been planted
overnight, when in truth it fed on our neglect,
crept, link by link, until it was the only thing,
link by link, holding the fence together. And, petty,
when the neighbors called it a nuisance, we
watered it—in spite of inedible berries, despite it
choking out the lilacs. We called it “kind of pretty.”
In this hotter than normal June, on this hotter than
normal planet, I’ll pull the weeds like electrical plugs,
and if I croak from heat stroke, say I was your one and only
monkey’s paw. You mow the lawn and gut the gutters and
maybe at your eulogy I’ll say he had the largest heart.