Word Count: 446
He asks what I want for my birthday. With my best Miss Universe smile I say, “World peace.” I’m sorry; I can’t always be ready with the right answer.
He is the love of my life. I cannot tell him I want a whole man. I want him to have feeling below his waist. I want him to want me, to make love to me again. I cannot tell him I want sex with a man.
He laughs. He always gets my jokes. And he’s always ready to laugh. It’s one of the things I love best about him. It’s one thing he was able to stop the war from taking away.
I don’t know how he does it. How he’s come to accept and adjust. I don’t have that forgiving resilience. It’s the faith of a child and I am too worn to believe any more.
It was the shock of his coming home without legs overcome by the blessed relief he came back at all. So many of my friends are widows. I felt lucky, I did, and I didn’t mind at all the days spent driving back and forth to the hospital, rehab, and later, the care he required at home. It was easy and I never thought twice about bandages, oozing wounds, scars, moving the bed downstairs to the den, emptying bags of urine and feces, washing his body, helping him learn to do what he could for himself. I was busy, my life full of things I could do to keep him safe, keep him comfortable, simply love him.
“It gets easier with time,” everyone told me. And it did; it did until now. When the children are gone and the guy mowing the lawn is some neighborhood boy who doesn’t come in for a beer between front and backyards. Who expects to be paid in money instead of lasagna and wine.
“No, really,” he says, “what would you like for your birthday this year?” His smile is cut with importance. He must order something online and time is something he has to consider. And have our daughter pick up and send him a card he can give me. No longer last minute, my man. “Anything you really want in particular?” he asks. His face softens with emotion. His eyes show me all that he feels, all that he’s determined to give me that he can.
I sit down beside him and take his hand in mine. These bad times come and go. I accept the guilt and move on, move on to reality and things I believe to be true. Things that transcend. Endure. “Just you, my love. Just you.”
