“What do you like about me?” he asked.
“I like everything about you. You’re my very best friend.” came her reply.
“Yeah, but what specifically, makes you like whatever it is that you like about me?”
“Okay, okay…” she said, her brow furrowing thoughtfully.
“I like that you’re smart, and funny, and that we talk a lot, and that you love me the way that you do, as much as you do.”
“Well, thank you, babydoll.” he said grinning at her, still somewhat dissatisfied with her answer and not sure why he was.

Later, she came into the room that he was writing in.
She said: “You know that I don’t have the same type of thoughts floating around in my head that you do. You know that my words don’t come as easily, as effortlessly as yours do, right?”

“I do know this.” he said.
“But sometimes it just feels really good to hear good things about oneself; to hear reasons why you are someone’s other half.”

“Fine, but you should know that it has always been this way, you have always stood in the very same light that you stand now. You are me, and I am you, and we are we. It’s this way now, and has been for the better part of two decades. It will always be so.”

“I know.”
"I do know.” he said reassuringly.

And, he did know.

She turned, his beloved, to leave the room.
“I’ll leave you to your writing then.”
“I can’t wait for you to show me what you’ve been working on.”

He called her name, just as her foot had touched the threshold.

And, so she came back to him,
this poet,
this writer,
with his artist’s self-doubt,
his constant worry
as to his worth,
his being ‘good enough’.

She wrapped her arms around him,
he allowing himself to be enveloped,
felt secure
in her embrace.

So,
with a wink,
a contented sigh,
and a brief pat
of her magnificent
left buttock,
he released her.

He was already
thinking
of
the next
stanza.

*
-JBClaywell
© P&ZPublications 2018