Grateful

I came home angry

ready for a fight

I lined my breath with kerosene

ready to start a few flames

but then the stress descended,

and the long, needy tentacles

of our struggle took hold

around our tightened necks,

bound us together and said

with the voice of child

in need of an afternoon snack

“take care of me.”

When our struggle was satiated,

we lay folded in each other’s arms

with no strength left for quarreling

no fuel for a firey storm

but merely feeling grateful

to the universe

to mere coincidence

for the day we stumbled

crawled, clumsy and shaken

into each other’s complicated

guilt strewn lives.