Only You
I’m listening to Bob Dylan. “I know you haven’t made your mind up yet. But I would never do you wrong.” And I tear up like I always do during this song.
I think back to college when you figured it might be a good idea to date other guys to be sure I was the right one for you. “Maybe it will help us solve our little problems and strengthen our faith even more,” you wrote to me.
I think how grateful I am that you never found anyone else, never found another guy you wanted to be with, never set me up with any rivals to compete with and fend off. For surely I would have fought to the death for you (I did fight for you, in fact.) and I would have won too. I wanted you more than anything back then, as I still do now. I wanted you more than the Earth wants the Moon, needed you more than the Stars need the Sky. From our very first date (and I think even before that) I simply had to have you.
Nevertheless, I am so very glad there were no rivals for me to contend with, so very glad. But were there really no rivals, I wonder? Was there someone else deep in our history whom I have overlooked, or a rival I am simply unaware of?
“I never had any rivals for your attention and affections when we were back in college did I?” You look up at me from the kitchen sink, your soft brown eyes shining. “No. Should you have?” you respond. “What? No, of course not. I didn’t need any rivals to keep me interested and honest, to keep me in the chase.” You smile. “No. No rivals, My Love. It’s always been only you.”
I’m relieved like I always am when I hear the answers I want to hear to the questions I already know the answers to but need to ask anyway. No rivals for my Beauty’s tenderness, it was only me, what a marvelous thing.
But come to think of it I did have rivals. Not one rival or two, but a whole bunch of them, a multi-headed pack of rivals, a hideous male Medusa of rivals – all of your damn college boy friends, the guys you talked with and studied with, the guys who walked you to classes and told you you had pretty eyes, Ralph and Don, Larry and Steve, and all those lousy bastards in your Math classes and the Senate who you flirted with and told me stories about. “Don’t give a second thought to my seeing or studying with Don. He lost his academic scholarship…”
Yes, they were all my rivals and you used them constantly to your advantage (clever girl), to make me jealous, to keep me alert, vigilant, attentive, to remind me that you had your options should I even think about another girl, to keep me focused on only you, and – it worked, of course it worked.
“I’ve known it from the moment that we met, no doubt in my mind where you belong.” That Bob Dylan, always having the right words for everything.
* Mike Estabrook says “Well hey hi, been a while since I checked in, but here I am darkening your doorstep again, or rather your email box, sending along a few poems (and other stuff) for your consideration. I think you know this already but, I have a new mission in my life. My apprenticeship as a poet over the past 20 years has prepared me for my latest project – The Patti Poems – poems (and some prose) about my wife. This project will be my magnum opus. It (and she) has become a bit of an obsession. And, oh woe is me, it definitely has a mind of its own, pulling me all over the place. But well, so often we do these things simply because we must. Patti is my climb up Mount Everest. I’m not certain, quite honestly, if I am up to the task but what choice do I have really? Where is Dante when I need him? He has sent me off through Purgatory and into Paradise all by myself.”
