On Marriage

One Argument For The Existence Of God

I don’t remember what we were arguing about,
only that we were in public — in Hugo’s
on a Friday night, winter as much as it can be
in Fayetteville, and in case you haven’t been,
the red door to the cafe is below street level and
inside the heating pipes are red and exposed,
and the lights burn red as well. That night
it was so crowded it was hard to hear, so
we felt free to keep going while we waited
for a table — spiteful, vicious, everything
below the belt, the kind of fight where after a while
you have no idea what you have said
much less believe, only that you are trying
to stay afloat on your little raft of words
and not let the other party wipe you out.
But over the cackle of glasses and forks
we kept having to say What? Could you repeat that?
and You want me to cough? Even seated
at a round two-top too small to hold our plates
and the drinks we desperately wanted by then,
it did not stop. We sat in the red-checkered
red-lit din and let that argument swell and thin
like an inflating balloon, our coats
being knocked off our chairs by people
on their way out, and it wasn’t until we asked
the waitress what we owed that she said
Nothing; a stranger had paid our bill for us
and told her not to tell us until he had gone.
All the way home in the new snow —
silent, now, abashed — we wondered
who he was, if he could hear,
whether he loved or pitied us.