Twenty-Five Octobers

The leaves are turning again Right on schedule Like they know what month it is for us Folding chairs in your uncle's yard A borrowed suit a half-size wide at the shoulders You wore your mother's pearls and trembled once And steadied me, the bolder of the two of us The maples dropped their colors like confetti Twenty-five Octobers gone — who's counting? I am. Always ready. We were too young to know What we were promising Twenty-five Octobers, my love, and the answer's still the same The yes I said in a borrowed suit, I'd say again today Through the house we painted twice, the girl we raised down the hall You hum at the sink like it's nothing at all — It's everything. It always was. Twenty-five Octobers, and I'd do every one because of you. Just because. Remember the winter the furnace quit We slept in coats and laughed till the pipes thawed out The smell of paint that whole first summer — Robin's-egg blue, then the gray you talked me out of doubting Our girl learned to dance on the kitchen tile Standing on my shoes while you clapped the time Nobody warned me The ordinary would be the treasure Twenty-five Octobers, my love, and the answer's still the same The yes I said in a borrowed suit, I'd say again today Through the house we painted twice, the girl we raised down the hall You hum at the sink like it's nothing at all — It's everything. It always was. Twenty-five Octobers, and I'd do every one because of you. Just because. Someday our girl will stand in some October Folding chairs, somebody trembling at her side And I'll lean over and tell you what I'm telling you tonight: It goes fast. Hold on. You're the luck of my whole life. Twenty-five Octobers, my love, and I'm not done counting yet Give me twenty-five more and I still won't pay the debt The house, the girl, the gray we picked, the hymn you hum unaware — I'd take the long way through it all as long as you were there It's everything. It always was. Twenty-five Octobers — marry me again, just because. The leaves are turning, love Put on your coat Let's go count them