without planning we ended up matching- all black & red and you can't tell easily from the photo but the pattern on kestryl's bowtie matches my dress (the matching prompted us to think of corny prom pictures hence the funny pose)

You proposed to me eight weeks in. we were babies and crazy.
You proposed to me even though we didn’t/don’t believe in the institution.
It was something about working on that campaign.
Having ½ the state tell us how wrong we were
Sorta made even us want to get married
We've always been rebels.

7am on your college campus
Chalking pro-homo messages
Encouraging already liberal though sometimes queer uncomfortable students to vote against writing discrimination into the state constitution

Maybe it was the lack of caffeine or the chalk dust on my Carhartt overalls
Or maybe, as you like to say sometimes you know a good thing when you see one and you don't want it to get away.

If we win this thing, what do you say we go for it?

Oregon rain threatening to wash away our messages
But I knew what we had was more permanent than sidewalk chalk
Even when two months later we stood holding each other realizing we'd lost
I knew we were stronger than any ballot initiative

Three years later lying in bed at our first house
Our conversation was all NYC move and future dreams when you rolled over and asked if I wanted to have a party before we went east

Only because it was dark
Did I confess that radical politics aside I did
3 years ago we stood on my mom's deck
A day that meant more to some of our family than it did to us

But that's a bit of a lie too

Because despite myself I was tearing up
Writing vows on no sleep in my moms' office twenty minutes before we walked out
Ear turned to make sure queer & straight hadn't culturally collided
And it meant more to me than I thought it should
Not more intense, just different
Than sitting in that tattoo parlor when we got our interlocking circles
Mixing steel and ink and blood
Into a promise

Our *real* anniversary isn't until next month
6 years together
But today is special too
Tonight we will eat Sushi
And celebrate our crazy idea of having a party six days before moving cross-country
Forget that we spent the night in the emergency room after leaving the party
And we were running on no sleep
Ignore that the photographer didn't do what we asked
That if I could do it again I wouldn't have invited my grandmother

But I meant every word I said that day on that deck
Where some god/goddess kept the rain from falling
I meant it when I said

"You are everything I didn't know I was looking for and would have never expected to find. Our life together is more incredible than I could ever have imagined life being..."

"With you I have the family I have always longed for, and I vow above all else to love you with all my heart"

Latest posts by Sassafras

• Farewell - May 1st, 2011
• Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme - April 16th, 2011
• Little Red Writing Dress - March 27th, 2011
• Unexpected Butch/Femme Poetry - March 22nd, 2011
• Tell-tale Signs a Queer Femme is Queer - March 4th, 2011