Letting the Ice Down

With the crisp diamond
wrapped snug around your ring finger,
I think of home.
The sweet band of silver
held together by skin and promise
turns him from a friend
into a partner.
I picture the way father
proposed himself for life
to our mother.
An image of dad,
down hard on a left knee
while the crowd dances.
His own heart, dancing,
never falters.
Mother locks her stare into father
like ice.
Cracking into a warm
and lifelong love they did.
A kiss breaks the ice.
Even now
I see how husbands and wives
melt themselves
into one another.
I pay attention to women
becoming wives;
Husbands becoming heroes.
Every day,
wives and heroes warm the ice around themselves
down to a puddle of promise.
Husband and wife,
Change me, you season of seasons.
For one day,
remembering dad knocking his knee to the floor,
mom taking father by a ring,
I long to watch fire and ice meet
for the first and last time.
One of these years,
I wish for the crisp
around my own heat
to founder.
I long to melt
the way dad did
when he let the ice down.
Though our ice
we find warmth
when it wants to.