MAGICAL TALES
(for my companion Deborah)
At first blush there was her spicy beauty, and a smile
from a mouth shaped by frequent laughter.
There was the shared anti-racist politics of class struggle
with the insistence on queer and women’s rights.
But the magic has been in her stories,
when she comes alive with the spoken word.
Every ordinary back and forth with doctors or friends gets woven into an adventure.
It’s often a mystery plot in the audio book she is reading,
prefaced to me with the question
“do you want me to tell you about it?”.
I always answer yes
because no matter how hard her day has been she comes alive
with the excitement of telling the tale.
And I do too.
The telling and the listening,
both acts of love .

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