& the town where I married you is four feet underwater. 

My arms are spoonwood draped around your neck. 

You have never learned to sway your hips to the beat, 

and you use your lack of rhythm as an excuse to spin 

every ‘00s punk–pop song the DJ plays into a shoddy waltz,

so we are two storms converging til I unhinge myself 

from the music & match your cyclonic movements.

We become immovable as the walnut tree who witnessed 

our wedding vows, immune to the rules of meter, oblivious 

to our inevitable erosion. Mr. Brightside flows around us 

like floodwater. The town where I married you 

is drowning. Far away, American bombs fall

on people who don’t deserve to die.Yesterday, a car hit a kid 

in the crosswalk near our house. You & I slow dance 

to this shitty song like lovers at the end 

of a saccharine rom-com. Sometimes I joke 

that we’re karmically shielded by disasters we’ve survived: 

your parents’ addictions, my father’s wild violence.

I like to pretend our pain earned us a glass globe 

of protection, hand-blown by the universe from the stuff 

of our singular love. That the greatest storm 

we’ve yet to weather is a predictable tizzy of glitter. 

The town we love is drowning, and I dance with you,

damming my grief with fondness 

for your clumsy demonstrations of affection. 

The guitar riffs. I hum invocations, though I’ve never once 

prayed for something that had a shot at coming true. Like: 

tragedy will never touch us. 

The sea cannot reach its fist this far inland. 

It cannot smother the small glow of our life 

as it did the mountains’ blue light.

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