Meal Prep - a love poem

Meal Prep

Seems inevitable to be here, sitting at a table not too far away

from my love’s food preparation for the coming week,

pondering life as she ponders proper amounts of distribution

for burritos, to be wrapped, bagged, frozen for another day

not too far away.

Like tomorrow, or day after, and so on.

Freezer gives extension of life, and perhaps she too has extended

my life on some level, that knowing I’m living not just for myself

but for her as well, has added numbers to my counter, a counter

determining the length of time I will have on this earth. Of course,

I can’t see the counter, it isn’t conveniently displayed in text

as in an onscreen image, or ways google maps subtracts the minutes

it takes to drive from Allendale, Michigan to Ann Arbor, Michigan,

or ways I mentally add and subtract time to when I get to be with her

again. But, freezer gives time to consume what she prepares today,

and I think that is an awful lot like how we prep ourselves

for a future that in my mind should extend into infinity.

That late night talks where I might strike a nerve

in my own history, and become embarrassed

with tears and cry, is a way to prep ourselves for an existence

that is enveloped, stamped and post-marked just for us

at a near future date.

I believe it.

I believe it is possible that small confessions

are windows into our private souls, so that we, in a symbolic

sense, strip ourselves naked, taking off armors

to say, here is the rawest part of me, and see if they balk, or laugh,

or run at the naked-mole-rat image of emotional exposures.

As she moves about, in pajama pants, and t-shirt she sleeps in,

I like to think this is a screen-in-screen image of our whole story,

a zoomed in spot in our timeline, that might reflect a thousand-and-

one other times similar to it, where she preps some food, or I do

too, since I would like to contribute my time in that way at some

point, where I am writing away about our life, in a way that might

make her smile, and I’d like to think it would be commonplace.

In this way, I am stunned to discover I have been seeking this comfort

and safety for as long as I knew I would have to adult in this world,

and had seldom found someone as absolutely real, and thoughtful

as she is. Sometimes, when I’m alone in my dorm room, contemplating

my future, as a writer, and as scary as it is, I like to look at pictures

saved in my phone, one of her smiling with a scrunched-up nose

and think if this is my future, my professional failings can be as big

as they need to be, and as hard to deal with as they can be, but if she’s

going to be there to hold onto my pieces, and cradle them and rock

them back into a whole, and prep me proper, and roll me up in her love

and store me in her embrace for our endless tomorrows, then I am

sure I can struggle the seas that bash at me in my mind, for she knows

they are there, and she still wants me near even if crashing waves

occasionally make a mess on our floors.

Interesting, to see it so vividly

for I was so afraid of failure, but failure

is not something I witness in our timeline, if I can pull back

magnifying glass, and come to a farther

on point, and inspect it, I see love abound, and laughter,

and food, I see meal prep for me, for her, for little children

stomping like stampedes of dinosaurs across dining

room, and I see kisses on neck as we prep

it together, these small little beings, and each other, always each other

so that we are frozen in our feelings, ready to be opened, ready to devour

each other, and sustain our lives we’ve built together. I see that

now, sitting at table, a few feet from sounds of her slippered

feet on hardwood floor, and I find that I am full,

belly and soul.