Some People You Always Love

You just do. You might be long gone from them. You might not know where they are.
They may have hurt you. They may have been all wrong. They were there when you were 22 years old and you got excited about who you were for the first time. They taught you something: how to tie a figure eight. How to make hollandaise. How to feel like the world could end but it would be okay because you! were riding in their yellow skylark! They left lonely poems on your windshield. They loved you, but they wouldn't say so. Or they did and then you couldn't stand it anymore. Sometimes you go back there and have the obligitory drink with them. They tell you how good you look and you wonder if they really think you have finally gotten fat. Some of them, however, never lose the shine they had to begin with, and they think that about you too. You wish you would have done something different with them. But you didn't. What you did was choose somebody who is right now singing off key to a song he likes. He is putting away the clean dishes. He has filled up the olive oil sprayer with 151 and has set it on fire. He is reading to you aloud so you can go to sleep. He is bringing you tea in bed in the mornings. He is telling you, all the time, to stop worrying. He is trying not to get a beard. He is noticing that his knees hurt for the first time. He is waking up with you every day, laughing at inappropriate jokes you made, and kissing you behind your ear.
He is being everything he is, and everything he is not, right in front of you. And you? You just love him. All the time.