I have something of a confession to make. There are eight months before I get married – but I’ve already started having stress dreams about it. From having told the photographer the wrong day to my bridesmaids knitting at the altar… I’ve been having all manner of panicky dreams.
The most panicked of all, however, was the dream I had a few weeks ago. In it, I realised at the altar that I had forgotten to arrange any readings. I stopped the ceremony and pulled out a folder to persuade the vicar that we could squeeze in a poem. In my dream, I was aware that it was a specific poem that I was looking for. That poem was The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy by Jeffrey McDaniel. Unfortunately for dream me, I couldn’t find the poem and the ceremony had to go on without it.
Partly because of the dream, and partly because it’s such a gorgeous poem, I thought I’d share it with you here. I headed to Google and typed in the title of the poem. And then this happened;
The beady-eyed amongst you will have noticed that the third result is my own blog, and that I’ve shared this same poem before. The even more beady-eyed among you might have noticed that I shared the poem on the 27th October 2010 – which happens to be exactly two years before our wedding day (though of course, I didn’t know that then).
That is what I like to call a very literary coincidence.
Now, enough of me. Here’s Jeffrey McDaniel
The Benjamin Franklin of Monogamy
Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice
the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massive
insect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the end
of a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurt
in your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kinds
of women—those you write poems about
and those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought you
a bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.
My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addiction
lyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M.,
whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I worked
within the confines of my character, cast
as the bad boy in your life, the Magellan
of your dark side. We don’t have a past so much
as a bunch of electricity and liquor, power
never put to good use. What we had together
makes it sound like a virus, as if we caught
one another like colds, and desire was merely
a symptom that could be treated with soup
and lots of sex. Gliding beside you now,
I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy,
as if I invented it, but I’m still not immune
to your waterfall scent, still haven’t developed
antibodies for your smile. I don’t know how long
regret existed before humans stuck a word on it.
I don’t know how many paper towels it would take
to wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the light
of a candle being blown out travels faster
than the luminescence of one that’s just been lit,
but I do know that all our huffing and puffing
into each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trick
birthday candle—didn’t make the silence
any easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kisses
I scrawled on your neck were written
in disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of you
so hard one of your legs would pop out
of my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d press
your face against the porthole of my submarine.
I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen years
to reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skidding
off the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyriding
over flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolate
to be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphy
of each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraph
from the volumes of what couldn’t be said.
