Even now, I can’t hear the organ intro
to Percy Sledge’s sultry when a man
loves a woman without that afternoon
returning full force: it’s on the radio—
you’re painting? plastering? the little bedroom
and I’m giant pregnant reading Middlemarch
for my PhD exams on the glassed-in porch—
and suddenly you crank up the volume
until the entire house begins to shake.
Don’t tell me there’s no such thing as happiness.
You racing down the stairs, ecstatic,
shouting listen to this! listen to this!
your whole heart audible, mine pumping fast.
We were young, infallible.  It wouldn’t last.