Tonight's Poet Corner: How You Keep Her 101

How You Keep Her 101
by Belinda Roddie

This is how you keep her: You leave
a bowl of ice cream outside her bedroom,
and if she refuses it, you pour the melted
soup down the sink. You drink half a
bottle of wine just so you can get
the courage to sing her a song in front
of a ravenous group of friends. You know

when to quit and when to begin
just from hearing one word, or seeing
one smile or frown or twist of the tongue,
all the cues memorized like the lines of
a yet-to-be-written script. When it's dark
outside, you let her glow in her own light.
When it's raining, you watch her dance
in it, and you don't intervene. And when

she decides she wants to keep you, she
does so out of her own volition - not because
you did everything right, but because you
did most things wrong and she still found
value in the things you managed not to fuck
up. Every time she said yes, every time
she kissed you, fondled you, held you close,
she was weighing the scales of gold in
her brain and concluding that this,

above all else, was what she wanted.
You respect that. You give her credit
where credit is due. And when it gets
warm in that bedroom of hers, when you're
in front of a white screen spewing your
creative scrap for all to see, never forget
to put out that bowl of ice cream for her
and see if this time, you hear a spoon
against porcelain, a sigh from under
the red, twisted sheets.