Not the guy who knocked me up
in high school. Nor the husband who stood
on the balcony after our ceremony 
looking as if he might jump. Not the 15-year 
love affair. Nor this man, only the third
I’ve made love to since age 20, 

a man who’s also been married twice;
a man who makes me laugh, wraps gifts 
in metallic blue paper, signs cards Love,
and Yours, with a fountain pen, sips wine in a theater 
lobby waiting to watch Hamilton with a notoriously
“cheap” date,” me, who after half a glass says, 

maybe we should get married 
                      and live next door to each other,

and it is like opening a box filled 
with bats and butterflies and chocolate and 
military tanks and a chorus line of naked dancing girls 
and King Kong and a hysterical toddler and a tiger
and a hurricane and my entire life history and his.

He holds up two fingers in the sign of a cross
to ward off vampires and fake screams NOOO, 
as I try to pull the words back into my mouth
and down my throat so I can swallow them, 
but they fly around near the ceiling, a surreal 
painting of swirl, maybe Magritte’s.