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Poem

If I had a hashtag or even understood them,
it might be “TMI.”
I don’t lack for stories and opinions.
I’ll engage in conversations with friendly total strangers
when right away I see they share my views.

Imagine being me, with all this honesty,
and the one person who ought to be the one
to whom I tell my deepest secrets
is the one from whom I sometimes hide simple things
which I freely discuss with my close friends.

For half a century, I have been married
and living this way.
What I say in my poetry, 
though it may seem like fiction,
once in a while it represents the things I cannot say 
to the one to whom I gave my hand, 
along with my trust and unrealistic expectations.

I am double (even triple) Earth sign.
My moon and sun declared this at my birth.
My practicality (and not so much emotion)
rules my head.
As double water sign,
my spouse is the worrying yin to my carefree yang.
His buckets of water spill over at times
into unforgiving hurt or anger.
I cannot always know how his moods
might ripple out to people he encounters in this world.
As his wife, and now his caretaker too,
I’m accustomed to his vacillating moods.

I learned some terms in college such as “projection.”
This one he employs in his rants against
those whose actions almost reflect his own.
Of course, I am far from perfect.
He is correct in his saying that
I’m not a very great housekeeper.
But I rarely bring up his flaws to him.
I avoid confrontations since
one cannot win a battle with a person
whose opinions are the only ones
that he can see as right.

When he tells me I need to learn better communication skills,
I laugh inside myself. I wish I could record
our weird conversations at these times
because telling me I cannot communicate ideas is ludicrous.
It doesn't help that he is deaf in one ear
and does not always wear his hearing aid
in his other ear, which is nearly deaf as well.
An industrial accident two years ago
 gave him a concussion
which has somewhat destroyed the cognitive skills
he had when he was a hard-working younger man.
It's hard for him to focus now, and he feels
so dejected that he no longer can work.

My marriage is a bit unique. I’ve watched couples
whose lives seemed ideal and so much more peaceful
than my own was when I first married.
I’ve watched with incredulity as such couples divorced.
I cannot understand why they can’t recapture 
their original passion. i care for my spouse,
but he makes it difficult for me to love him.
I’ve always been there for my husband.
A mental breakdown 30 years ago
put him on the pathway to healing.
He has learned to face some demons
and take the pills for depression and anxiety
that he so requires.
He can even admit sometimes
when he is wrong.
I see this as progress, and it makes me glad.

His tirades are far less frequent now.
In fact, he likes to brag to others
that I’m the best thing that ever happened to him.
He refuses to read my poetry,
yet he enjoys telling me I’m pretty.
On road trips I sit in complete silence, writing poems.
But at home we sometimes have discussions.
I can be more open with him today, and yet . . .
I can still say something seemingly innocent
and he’ll misread it and blow it out of  proportion.
When an argument ensues, he quickly extinguishes it
by yelling angrily at me to shut up.
I let this go through one ear and out the other.
Were I to stand my ground, 
the rest of my day would be ruined.
Thus it’s my self-esteem that sustains me.

I look around at couples reveling in love and romance.
Such warm and fuzzy emotions I invent with poetry,
and some things I speak of will never find their way
to my husband’s one “good” ear. 
It’s sad to write this, but my spouse 
could never be my soul mate.
Had I been a coward for not walking away 
in those first bad years?
Or should I be commended for staying loyal?
I think a lot of women are like me,
simply tolerating the partnership
to which they’ve grown accustomed

I am Earth, and he is Water.
I refuse to lug around emotional baggage
as my husband does.
My physical ailments are more than enough
for me to bear. It is said that
earth and water together make mud.
Mud is not so bad when it has mixed into it
our mutual values of family loyalty
and a conscientious dedication to our work.
Also, mud is so nice to wallow in!
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