Love as per My Mother

I breathed when your father breathed.
That’s how I learned to inhale long and deep
and exhale quick.
In a bed for forty years, one small bed, we one.

I could have chosen (Could I not?) to follow another man
Or lived like a fairy, sans
a man-
But, God, it surely felt good to make him mine.

Not in a quest to find love. No, no-
As it happens in dark halls, pages, in glitter rains-
With him- I- freed and tussled in a crammy bed-
Shredded each other for pleasure and pain.