I am tired of love poems that are odes to perfection

Show me your observance of faults and angry cold silences
Show me shouting matches at 12pm, 2am and 9 o’clock on a Saturday

Show me quibbles over parenting

Show me chores left undone and drawers in disarray and clothes on the floor and people taking each other for granted

Show me one person changing and the other staying the same and both growing sideways at different rates

Show me how they still relate while they are changing

Show me the span of years of hardship and resilience

Then show me forgiveness again and again and again

Show me old unbreakable, ugly and imperfect love

Show me lights on at all hours because someone is sick
Show me the partner who gets up and finds Panadol despite being sick too

Show me a hug
Show me tiredness and despair and loneliness and misunderstanding

Show me chasms and divides and then show me cataclysmic shifts and grief side by side, shadows on the wall going off to bed

Show me pillows in the shapes of two heads that have laid in the same bed that a father made so long ago, when they were just kids themselves
Show me how we came through all of this
To here
Show me fear

Show me anger and abruptness and edges where hate skates on thin ice around moods that shatter the peace and quiet of everyone

Show me gentleness
Show me “me too”
Show me “I’m so grateful I have you”
Show me “I’m sorry I don’t know what to do”

Show me scarred hearts and battered wedding rings
Show me two people still holding hands
And laughing at the same things
After all these years
Show me that sort of love
And I might read it

Photo courtesy HK Photo Company