“Devil hates happy”

The elder said to me and a group of

Of pilgrims I had known before the world

Had a very very very bad cough.

And those words struck me then

As I sat, listening him recount wisdom,

This time, stroking my wife’s hand,

That tender bit of sweetness unknown to me

In the before times.

And I squeezed it with sheer gladness

Pulsing her reciprocally playful fingers

In mine.

For fear— fear plagued our young marriage

Fear plaguing those in a world exiting plague,

Fear of subjecting my wife to a new religion,

To strange customs, and stranger in-laws,

Whose own love of their own son would often

But not always

Turn them hawkish, and fierce

In an attempt to build protective walls

Around what they had worked so hard to

Raise and cultivate.

And in this strangeness, it was and is tempting

To exercise trepidation

To apologize for intrusion

To make amends for lack of expectation

To give a sigh when that long-ago expected image

Of what perfect would be was not there

And all that slow, while

The kind of while which twists and wrings the heart

Like a sponge dripping cold anxiety with each breath.

All that slow while, the little horned one

The accuser

The deceiver

Laughed and laughed, knowing that in sowing fear for a reality

That was not the ideal

He could destroy the germination of something good

And so I squeezed

And she squeezed back

And back

And back again

And squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze

Without heed nor care of who was watching.

We were reckless in our commitment to showing each other that we cared.

The Devil hated that

and we love it.