I think the last poem I wrote for Carrie, although not necessarily the last one I wrote about her (or at least us), was ‘Broken Things’ (#963) in December 2007. It is I have to say a far superior poem to the one above and yet both tackle the issue of love as an imperfect thing. Love is such a huge topic in literature and yet the more I read about it the less clear I find my definition of what love is—let alone what true love is—has become. The subtext in the above poem is trust. Trust seems like an essential ingredient when it comes to defining romantic love and yet even when a partner lies to and/or cheats on their mate it is possible for a relationship to hobble on and even to heal itself but fixed or not it’s never the same. 

When one of my aunts came over from Canada in the mid-to-late sixties she gifted each of her nephews and her niece a silver dollar. My brother and sister both mercenarily exchanged theirs for sterling but I hung onto mine until not too long after I wrote this poem when F.’s son stole it. Whilst visiting America with Carrie we visited a flea market and ran across a stall where, amongst other coins, the vendor had a whole tray of Canadian silver dollars including one from 1965 which would’ve been indistinguishable from the one I’d lost and yet I didn’t buy one because it wasn’t the one which was idiotic because it would’ve been identical and I regretted it afterwards. 

I think one of the stupidest questions we can ask anyone is: Why do you love me? and expect a serious answer. I’ve genuinely loved several women in my life—and been besotted by numerous others—but once I found myself in love with my second woman, although she was only a girl at the time, and compared my love for her to my first love I started to realise even back then I’d got it all wrong. Nowadays I’m simply grateful what Carrie and I have works without feeling any pressing need to question, analyse or understand it because I really don’t understand it. Understanding’s overrated.