Tame

  So you marry a good man and he tames you. And tame isn't bad. Tame is a roof over your head and a Chevy Silverado to haul your horses. Tame is date nights and sushi and hot air balloon rides. Tame is a job that adds another figure to the end of your salary. Tame is a weanling for your birthday. Tame is catching all the dreams you chased as a wild one. 

But sometimes you miss being wild. Cartwheels on the beach and sex in a corn field and not knowing if you had enough gas in the tank to get to where you were going. Breaking into basements and climbing water towers and swimming a mile out to sea in the face of a thunderstorm. Grappling hooks, speeding tickets, and getting by on the skin of your teeth while you lived out of the back of a Tercel nobody wanted you to buy. You miss feeling invincible and not being afraid to die. 

So you turn up your ear buds to tune out his snoring and you listen to Gypsy by Fleetwood Mac as you picture what life could have been, and you know he would be so hurt if he could hear these thoughts. 

And you think about what life would be if you chased those dreams to Tennessee. Or Kentucky. Maybe Alaska. Or Mongolia, though your bones are too old and too wise for that now. What if you fled to France and relived the war-torn years that your body can't seem to forget? 

What if you followed her in all her forms... to the side of a cliff, under the stars where the no human light can reach, to a raspberry patch on a hot July day, to a hay loft while flashlights searched from below, to a kitchen, to a bedroom, to an attic where vodka blurred the lines between friends and more? What if you could hold her under the moonlight, in the mist that hid you, over breakfast around a campfire?

Then you remember he died for her. And she kept you alive for him. And you wonder if that's why his eyes looked so familiar the first time you saw him...

Because you've all died before. He, the brave soldier, burning with fever in a canvas tent under kerosene light. She, the nurse who tried to save him . You, whose shattered heart found solace in her embrace after his passing.

And he doesn't remember, but you do. And you know that tame isn't bad. Tame is not a war zone. Tame is not bleeding out while your soulmate screams. Tame is not deciding to flee under the cover of night so the rest of you might live. 

So a good man tames you, and you marry him. And at night, when he sleeps, you wonder if his soul remembers.