Ryan Fox

Marriage

Ryan Fox

Even the most knotted among us are tenderized by it— the most dangerous rendered acceptable for household use— in unity and for one prolonged moment even the most forbidding among us is gentrified by it— even my wild and wind-blown heart is now just a mallet I leave on the counter for you to find and when you do you take out your own four-chambered briefly beating thing and lay it down like the good home cook you are on the graphite cutting board next to the bowl of salt.

For the sake of tenderness I have waged many wars because a man must have a cause I sang the black-throated blue warbler back to sleep I dismissed the sumptuary laws as no laws at all and borne on the budget wings of alcohol I said submit she said submit and the yoke was mild for a while the shackles lay lightly on our wrists.

Illustration by Jeff Pike