All the cool couples
are playing pickleball
on blue courts
the color of exotic seas
while we grow fat
on doughnuts from
the neighborhood bakery.

Suppose we had the gumption
to try on new lives,
would you love your new husband,
would I my new wife?

Isn’t that the rub of forever vows,
no one should change too much, too fast,
out-pacing the comfortable now?

But the dullard in overalls boasts —

My wife is the same exact girl
as when I married her —

as if she were a marble-eyed baby doll 
trunked in the dank crawlspace
of forever.