We had a big row last night and now the couch is unmade, now we are awake and talking softly with each other, sharing breakfast and a game of cards, now we are saying sorry things with a long kiss and he is out the door with his guitar and I am back on the couch listening to Tracy Chapman and staring at my open file.  The fight birthed and stirred inside there, all those words I am pouring out that are saying things I have not had the time to really hear and he said one wrong thing last night, made one little slip and the words written this last week roared back at him.

I have been writing about the dying and just days ago, in the middle of memorializing pieces already dead, He asked for more.  And then there was last night when I refused it because I felt so heavily human, so steadily selfish, and my pride-- it would not bow down.  I was carrying those pieces around with me.  I forgot to treasure what we are becoming because I could not get past what was.  I have been living with the dying this week and I gave him my death in a fit of anger.

I held those pieces out and I put them in his face Look at these parts that were me.  I could have been this but I am here, and I gave this piece and this one, He took those three also.  Now He wants a new thing of me and I know I can do it but I can not find the gladness in this one.  And it really is killing me.

The wonder inside this kind of dying is this: it is morning and I am ready.  It is morning and I am madly in love with this man, I am running toward what we create by pushing ourselves down to spring from the old.  This is the beautiful truth: I could never be what we are now on my own.  I could never make what we are making by myself.  I could be many different things, but I could not be this.  And the need that I have in my soul for his, the passions that two souls create together, that takes a little dying.  But it's worth it.

The three things I have learned so far:
Marriage is not fair.
Marriage is full of dying.
Marriage is more powerful than I had known.