Alone time..!

Arguing the shit out of things. 
Like the merits of plastic v. paper;
why shotguns are not appropriate
for high-rise apartments in the Loop;
whether and to what extent we should purchase
an area rug for our living room, especially given
that Daisy likes to use rugs as her personal toilet;
what I should be eating for dinner
and why it’s never ever enough;
how many donuts to purchase
from Firecakes (a dozen just doesn’t seem sufficient
for a weekend—especially if I’m forced to share….);
church stuff—God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit
and the power of prayer; autonomy and the scope
of “alone time,” “guy time,” “girl time,” “us time”;
Chicago v. anything else in  the universe,
even during Polar Vortex XIX; career changes
and the push for more money, more time,
more respect and to what extent these things actually
mean anything at all when pressed against happiness;
the meaning of “happiness,” to you and me, to us,
to our family, to our future; the color the sunset should
be when twilight overtakes us both and we are,
indisputably, O-L-D; who will leave first, who will step first
into the darkness, leaving the other behind,
a half-human now, rendered perennially aching
from the amputation of one’s soul; the efficacy
of prayer as a form of communication with those
that left first, stepped first, even if one-sided,
an argument still worth having because
it proves (illogically) that some partnerships
can survive death; when and how often to say
“I love you,” to each other, to our children,
to the completion of another sunrise to set,
another January to December, another birth
to death—only so that we can end by saying
it over and over, not in those exact words,
but by how our joined bodies remain the fulcrum
of everything that ever happens.