Check written
                   signed
                         submitted
                                 committed
                                           to living   
comfortably here for another month.

This marks my one hundred
                                                     and twenty-first payment.

A decade and a month
                                          (with more to come)
which was never the plan
and I would so like to think
neither was it God’s.
                                             (Some days, it’s really hard to tell)

I’ve given up on having my own family. Those cards
we’re lost from the deck ten, maybe five years ago.
Who needs another bedroom when you’re never gonna fill it?

Who needs a bigger, safer car when you’ll never need a booster seat?
Who needs to sit down and work out a budget for diapers, clothes,
groceries for four, baseball, dance, school then college
if nobody’s coming along to take those first steps?

I remember a scare -twelve- years ago.
Hell no I wasn’t ready, but challenge accepted;
would have done anything to provide for that child.
Since she’s had a couple of kids
with perhaps another on the way.

Such a recovery wasn’t allowed to me
                       (a victim of God’s passive will?)

but some days in this safe and familiar space, I wonder
if I would really want it any other way.
I think
             of people I’d have never met
             of places I’d have never loved
             of hobbies I’d have never enjoyed
             of a dream of literary creation
                      already taking too long in the solitude.
Would futures lost have yielded the same contentment 
I’ve learned to find so well?
             (so long as people give me life in lieu of destructive wind?)
I don’t know.

Some days, it’s really hard to tell.
I leave my check in the dropbox.

You can be exactly where you need to be
and still know it’s no where you could have been.