Marriage Bed

Nov 15 2011

When infatuation cools

and love blooms.

When grief turns to mourning

and morning to night,

and we lie together, holding tight

in the glow of 2 am,

we occupy separate worlds  –

two solitudes

in one familiar room.

The impenetrable inner life

that defies even us.

That others never touch.

You think you know someone,

the marriage bed

the morning light.

I don’t mean the intimacy of sex

or how she brought out the best

of your many selves.

But when you were at your worst,

afflicted with doubt

insecure.

I expected too much, projected some other

onto her.

And she, in turn

is also disappointed;

not the ambitious man

she would have preferred.

But loss makes all this trivial,

the recrimination, regret

intemperate words.

Of course, the only end is death

so you’d think we’d eventually learn.

But the gut doesn’t listen to sense

the heart the head.

So we lie together

in the marriage bed,

tightly spooned.

Not the cooler edge

where I feel exposed, defenceless;

but down in the centre

where it’s slightly depressed

and our bodies fit,

pressed skin-to-skin.

As close as we can get.

The boundary that keeps us out;

the heat

inviting us in.

My apologies to Rilke, for stealing “2 solitudes”. But it’s just too perfect to resist. Really, the whole poem is right there.

This is about the difficult challenge of marriage, of true intimacy, of impenetrable skin. Perhaps the fallacy of romantic love itself:  how idealizing the other, how projecting our own needs onto them, sows the seeds of failure. Yet how we cling to what we have, nevertheless. 

I’m imagining a couple who have lost a child. But really, it could be any kind of loss.

I quite like the hollow in the marriage bed. This says everything about familiarity, intimacy, longevity. And also why I chose Marriage Bed as the title.