Unbreakable Poem by Patti Masterman

In a reverse baptism
she will wash out of you
by degrees, like a moon straining to rise
or an eclipse slowly gaining on the sun.

Minute by minute,
you will learn one another's presence
by touch, by smell.
The milk almost insensible to you,
a passion she roots for by instinct.

You will live, like one wedded to the other
as the days come and go, one by one
never doubting where you are going,
as though the mapping were done in some secret place
you do not even need to know about
(While forgetting at the end,
you go separate ways..)

That part is always a surprise and always
an incomprehensibly long way off.
Still, each day will never return again
whatever its gains and losses.

Her shadows will etch your own face,
and your hair will lose some of its color;
nothing comes about without a price extracted.
But we always get much more than we gave.

And throw away all the advice anyone ever gave you,
and cover up the clock's face when you are too tired
to stare at it anymore, for every day is yours until it ends:
This unbreakable bond with life.