Advice

by Matthew Schwartz

She gives me the clichéd line with half a smile-
you really should travel, Matt, before you have a family,
before, she seems to say, you run out of time.

I snap up the slight condescension in her voice,
how far apart she believes we are, how gladly
she steps into world-weariness, while I am

only intense, askew.  This was the usual
curious distance we kept between us,
the presumption we almost felt obliged to love

in loving each other.  I’d thought her life
some easy script from the larger culture,
bland, trained for sadness, inauthentic-

she’d married early, anxious for motherhood,
the permission it would give her to be…what?
Lost in some “performance” of happiness?

I was anxious to believe that, too…
but she is happy, in a new distracted way
she would’ve covered up before.  Her daughter

fumbles with the places that can hoist her
to her feet, so my friend hovers.  We trade
playful warnings about what happens next,

how soon she’ll be running.  I think I want
a family too, I say, but years from now.
That’s good, she says absently, and changes

the subject, and I don’t know if I’m listening
for why she’d ignore me, or just wanting
anything to loosen our voices,

let them admit the safety or the fear
they lift us out of, the place we wouldn’t name
because we were there, already falling in.