"A Memory," a Poetry Post

When Lawrence and I got married
there were no jitters.

We had
laid out our
personal histories
like a buffet of
tragedies and
worn our
worst faces
proudly in
honest conversation.

We each knew the
monster
we were
dealing with.

We had secretly planned
an
elaborate
red and white
wedding
with
steak and lobster
at the head table.

He had already
selected
the ring.

But seasons changed.

I got a job offer in
Nassau with
no sure thing
in Freeport,
and that meant I was
going, going, going
somewhere else
somewhere else.

It was an
early Monday morning and
I had a ticket
to
catch the Discovery
in the
afternoon.

We were sitting in
Dad's TV room at
420-22,
lamenting that
we hadn't found a solution.

And that is when
he'd pulled out that
beautiful first ring,
an upgrade since
the situation
called for something
bigger.

And he said that
I should stay,
but we didn't have any thing
that I believed
that we should have
to make any thing,
and he agreed.

And I didn't have a
thing
to offer,
a foreign girl
on an island
with no prospects.

But it was a proposal,
and it was live,
a live proposal with
room for rebuttal,
for argument,
and we did argue
for a time.

Eight years later,
the Discovery is gone,
the first ring is gone,
and Lawrence is gone,
but I've got a memory
better than
any engagement story
ever told to me.

A pretty brown girl
went to an island
for a break,
and met a
great man
who meant and lived
what he said.

That was how that went.

We went to the
justice of the peace
after he'd spent
every cent
buying the ring and
getting registrations.

And we stood there
with last-minute witnesses,
and we smiled.

And we smiled,
and we smiled,
and we smiled.

-T. D. James-Moss