The Divorce Party

And count the star

That’s shining in your eye

And I’ll be satisfied

Not to read in between the lines

And I will walk and talk

In gardens all wet with rain

And I will never, ever, ever, ever

Grow so old again.

“It’s perfect,” Anna says. “It makes me want to go listen to it.”

“So we’ll go listen. As soon as I finish.”

“But we’re not going to tell them it’s here?”

“No,” he says. “They’ll find it one day. Or someone will find it.”

She smiles. “Like a second gift.”

“Like a blessing.”

She goes and lies beside him, her husband. “Who are you to bless anyone, old man?”

He laughs, and wonders, for a second, what a stranger would think if he came upon them. Two people lying here, between their home and the rest of everything. Would he know that they spent their whole lives here? Would he know that that has made all the difference? Would that even be the truth?

He looks at his wife, watches as she closes her eyes and takes in the late-day sun.

“Can everything end right here?” she says. “When we get to be this happy?”

He moves closer to her. “It just did.”