notes…
Early on Ethan limed her laughter – ‘bright and fruity notes.’
Cora copied that phrase in the small notebook she kept,
the cherished gift from her mother’s final Christmas.
Such talk caused her to christen him a ‘sommelier of life.’
Ethan liked the forming of that word – sommelier –
and would ask her to repeat it from time to time
just so he could watch the mechanics of her mouth.
Cora’s delicacy unnerved yet bolstered him.
Ethan and Cora were married under a full buck moon
in the town of Taos. He gathered her a bouquet of yucca
Cora thought the most fetching thing she’d ever seen.
The priest sealed their union with ‘crescit eundo, amen.’
She copied the phrase that night in the small notebook,
after their first lovemaking as her sommelier slept spent.
Weeks later, on a faded library bookmark, she deciphered
the cryptic blessing, her new state’s motto – ‘it grows as it goes.’
