What could be more meaningful than words?

A year ago today I was in freak-mode, frantically throwing together the last-minute details for my wedding (which I was counting on being perfect--a sure sign that the marriage would also be perfect). A voice (female and deceivingly lilting) inside my brain persistently reminded me (with perfect enunciation), "98 hours, and counting . . . 97 hours, and counting . . ." My pleas to her to shut the hell up were summarily ignored. With two days to go until showtime, Brock's ring, which I had stupidly ordered from Ireland, still hadn't arrived, and my stress reached the eye-bursting, brain-fraying, vein-popping, ear-steaming level. Poor Brock wondered aloud why I wasn't just sitting back and enjoying the moment. And then, after my hair caught fire and my fingernails shot right off my hands and stuck into the walls, he wondered silently.

The good news is that I've forgotten all about that time. Our wedding was perfect, and our first year of marriage has been happy, fulfilling, loving, sexy, fun, spontaneous, tender, silly, serious, comforting, edifying, loyal, respectful, kind, adventurous, intelligent, patient and eternal. Cliched as it may be, it feels as though we've always been together, that we're made for each other, that we'll be together forever.

During the few days before the wedding last year, I wrote this poem for Brock:

We are a river recovered
from the fall
when we were once water interrupted.
We are confused mist, now settled
after the churning slowed
and the flow resumed, finding relief
in our deep and constant union.
May we join in our river’s bed together
and discover joy in our journey.

We are a poem personified,
penned by one of the greats.
A Hopkins, a Collins, a Frost.
We are used words, which
when rearranged with talent and skill,
become fresh and alive, an obvious fit.
We are a sonnet, a ballad, an ode.
May we couple our words together
to compose our eloquent epic.

We are heaven’s cloths
woven from unraveled threads
forming patterns
with our combined colors:
golden joy, rosy exuberance, creamy confidence.
We are beauty renewed,
embroidered with our finest floss.
May we weave ourselves together
to complete our emerging mural.

Our first anniversary will be this Sunday. I need to come up with something to show Brock my love, my adoration, my devotion. He takes such good care of me emotionally, intellectually, physically. He is my life. How do you show your other self that he is everything to you? That you'd be a bag of bones without him? That he has saved your happiness? (Especially on a teacher's salary?) I'd like to write another poem, but the right words just aren't coming. Or maybe it's impossible to put together a sack of letters that form words meaningful enough to be valid for our love story.

Or maybe love stories are more meaningful than words. I am remembering Hamlet when Polonius says, "What do you read, my lord?" and Hamlet replies, "Words, words, words." I feel a little offended by Hamlet's flippant reply. I love words. I sigh contentedly when I read well-placed words, especially in poetry. The English teacher in me indignantly defends the value of words, especially when teaching students how to express themselves through writing. But when faced with expressing my own deepest feelings, I am compelled to admit that words may not convey the emotions I feel.

Instead of attempting to assign words to my emotions, maybe I'll go with plan B. What is plan B, you ask? Use your imagination. I'm sure it will come to you.