I had somehow not remembered
that any number times zero is zero.
David said, think of it this way,
20 zeros are nothing. We were in bed,
teeth cleaned, night guards ready
on the bedside tables. His three pillows
stacked behind his head, my five arranged like a boat
to cradle my back, an almost orange
moon penetrating our window through
smoky darkness like a blaze about to leap
across an expanse of pine forest. How
did this happen? All these years together
compressed into this moment of repeating
moments, so many of them indistinguishable;
so few of them recallable. What does dividing
any number by zero do to that number?
This is sort of fascinating, he says, that you
don’t remember any of this. He rolls
toward me, glides his hands around my hips.
His breath is minty, the skin on his face, flushed.
You’re cute, he says, what else
don’t you remember?
I remember running into you
at the Albuquerque airport, honey,
I say, after not seeing you for so many years.
You wore black jeans and a black tee shirt,
a black belt with a sliver buckle, black
Dr. Martens; I looked at you, your jet-black hair,
and somehow I saw that we were about to combine
sorrows and joys into the terrifying equation
of two people equaling one home. I remember
being panicked, my heart leaping into an abyss,
then sinking to my stomach as I watched
what was to become the rest of my life
glide his luggage off the carrousel. I remember
every minute of each labor, each delivery
for both children, and how going into the birthing
room for the second time, I remembered:
pay attention as the baby exits, that final
wet sliding out of me. I remembered
to pause for one of the swiftest moments
in my life, a whole new warm body
joining the living.