Weddings and marriages and relationships have been on my mind a lot lately, understandably so, since my brother got married a few weeks ago and Anders and I celebrated our 10-year anniversary. What makes it work? A strong sense of commitment through ups and downs and good and bad. An understanding that loving someone is not necessarily the same as BEING in love all the time and that that’s okay. The sense of your world righting itself when your loved one returns home from a week away. The deep, knitted-tight feeling that permeates everything about your life together.<\/p>\n
For What Binds Us
\nby Jane Hirshfield<\/b><\/p>\n
There are names for what binds us:
\nstrong forces, weak forces.
\nLook around, you can see them:
\nthe skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
\nnails rusting into the places they join,
\njoints dovetailed on their own weight.
\nThe way things stay so solidly
\nwherever they’ve been set down
\nand gravity, scientists say, is weak.<\/p>\n
And see how the flesh grows back
\nacross a wound, with a great vehemence,
\nmore strong
\nthan the simple, untested surface before.
\nThere’s a name for it on horses,
\nwhen it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,<\/p>\n
as all flesh
\nis proud of its wounds, wears them
\nas honors given out after battle,
\nsmall triumphs pinned to the chest<\/p>\n
And when two people love each other
\nsee how it is like a
\nscar between their bodies,
\nstronger, darker, and proud;
\nhow the black cord makes of them a single fabric
\nthat nothing can tear or mend.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n