Just You, Just Me

Father laughed. Mother fretted. "As inauspicious a begin-
ning as ever one's begun." But Sally insisted, "No priest, the
    justice
of the peace will do the trick - I do, you do, we're done." Two
hearts couldn't be happier. Not a minute when the hours
don't fly by. Borrowed, blue? Piece of cake. It's something new
and something old we still can't find. The sky's bright blue

but everything seems the same age. "Weren't your eyes blue?"
Sally asked, troubled. "Well, that's how trouble begins,"
Mother grinned like a gypsy. (Aha, something new!)
"I knew it wouldn't work." In the meantime, temping in Justice
O'Connor's office kept me busy. The 9-to-5 hours
flew by like 8 hours. Sally faxed me love notes addressed "To

Whom It May Concern." I wasn't concerned. "Table for two,
Café Zesty, 7:00!" I faxed back. Chicken cordon bleu,
all that wine ... our dessert sat untouched for hours.
The busboy consoled me. "Don't worry, Mack, you'll begin
to like it. You can't have your cake and eat it, just ice
cream. Neapolitan, if you're lucky." I needed a new

way to remember the old things. I hadn't written a new
poem in days, which felt like weeks. Well, there is "Ode to
Oprah," but that makes Mother groan. "Donald Justice
wouldn't write a poem like this." "Sky not so blue
on your side of the fence?" Father chuckles. "Why not begin
at the beginning and take it from there?" So ours

is no normal life, but what's ours is ours and so the hours
go by, some things new, some things brand new.
Tonight we make believe. Sally says, "You be gin
and tonic, no lime; I'll be a strawberry daiquiri or two
fingers of Glenfiddich in a very cold glass - crystal, light blue."
Why bother to philosophize about the workings of justice?

"Love," she sings, quoting Sting, "is stronger than justice,"
and we know how it works. Tonight we'll dream away, hour
by hour in our little pink house, happy as two blue
plate specials in a diner called Moe's. "Not just new, make it new-
er," Mother calls long-distance to say, and Father laughs.
    "Her two
cents' worth is worth a nickel!" I still don't know where to begin.

Have I said that before? Well, there's something old. "I knew
we'd find it," Sally sighs; my eyes, before closing, bright blue.
In a dream Mother sighs too. "Who could live like that?" Just us.