you have traveled over a lifetime of geography: two years dating, thirty years married, two kids three dogs six cats one bird, also one year apart in between all that: missing the way she baked brownies every Christmas, a whiskey burn the chocolate was so rich; appreciating one cold winter morning how she took the dogs out before work when dawn was weak and their leashes tangled.
you still had questions without guesses, there were spaces, places unknown to you: foundation of kitchen memories, mother’s knuckles cracking over dough, pushing out clumps of flour and butter pockets while humming a tune, maybe, but you cannot hear over the sound of your wife humming while gardening, petunias in the late spring. Perhaps it is the song her father wordlessly sang when he taught her to waltz, her bare feet tucked onto his boots.
she dances now on her knees, hands where you can’t see but elbows weaving a mandala through the air, sketching a story of trowels and horticulture.