Click here to listen to James Hoch reading this poem. Some things, I knew, were beyond choosing— father leaving, the endless
caring for mother, that love
is a salving: what medics and nurses do.
Fodder,
I was too small to object,
the conscription too severe.
So when you said
you felt drafted
into marriage, the shutter
screwing up my face, you
quickly followed, just a metaphor,
putting me at ease.
Try another,
I said, closing the window,
drawing a breath between each
sentence, trailing closely every word.