MY BOTTOM LINE

You are the bottom line, my love, the net
that catches me each time I take a leap
toward an absolute that isn't there
but appears dispersed in the relative:
warm supper waiting when I get in late,
my folded long johns on the laundry stack,
the covers on my side turned sweetly down
when I finally head upstairs from work
that couldn't wait till morning, the love note
tucked in my suitcase for my night away.

It says the obvious, the old cliches
I wouldn't want my friends to know we use
for love. And god forbid my enemies
should get hold of these endearments,
so banal, I would lose my readers' trust
if someone published them under my name.
But still as I write mine (with smiley face)
and slip it under the pillow on your side,
or when I read yours in a hotel room
I feel more moved than by a Rilke poem
or a Tolstoy novel or a Shakespeare play.
My love grows stronger with the tried and true
if it comes from you. More and more as we age
and the golden boys peer out of the magazines
with their sultry looks and their arched brows,
I'm so relieved I'm not an ingenue
searching for you at parties, singles bars.
I have you, waving when my plane gets in,
curling your body in the shape of mine,
my love, my number one, my bottom line.

Julia Alvarez, The Woman I Kept To Myself