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