i do but the motherfuckers say we cant cause youre a girl and im a girl so the most we can hope for is an uncivil union in vermont but i want church bells i want rosary beads i want jesus on his knees i want to walk down the aisle while all the patriarchy smiles well i guess thats not true but i do want to spend my life with you and i want to know that fifty years from now when youre in a hospital room and getting ready to die when visiting hours are for family members only i want to know theyll let me in to say goodbye cause ive been fifty years memorizing how the lines beneath your eyes form rivers when you cry and ive held my hand like an ocean at your cheek saying baby flow to me cause fifty years ive watched you grow with me fifty years of you never letting go of me through nightmares and dreams and everything in between from the day i said buy me a ring buy me a ring that will turn my finger green so i can imagine our love is a forest because i wanna get lost in you and i swear i grew like a flower every hour of the fifty years i was with you and thats not to say we didnt have bad days like the day you said that checkout girl was so sweet and i said id like to eat that checkout clerk and you said baby thats not funny and i said baby maybe you could take a fucking joke now and then and i slept on the couch that night but when morning came you were laughing yeah there were times we were both half in and half out the door but i never needed more than the stars of your grin to lead me home for fifty years you were my favorite poem and id read you every night knowing i might never understand every word but thats okay cause the lines of you were the closest thing to holy id ever heard youd say this kind of love has to be a verb we are paint on a slick canvas its gonna take a whole lot to stick but if we do well be a masterpiece and we were from the beginning living in towns that frowned at our hand holding folding up their stares like hate notes into our pockets so we could pretend they werent there you said fear is only a verb if you let it be dont you dare let go of my hand that was my favorite line that and the time we saw two boys kissing on the streets of kansas and we both broke down crying because it was kansas and what are the chances of seeing anything but corn in kansas we were born again that day i cut your cord and you cut mine and the chords of time played like a concerto of hope so we could feel the rope unwind feel the noose of hate loosening loosening from the years of people like you arent welcome here people like you cant work here people like you cannot adopt so we had lots of cats and dogs and once even a couple of monkeys you taught to sing hey hey were the monkeys you were crazy like that and i was crazy about you on nights you couldnt sleep id lay awake for hours counting sheep for you and you would rewrite the rhythm of my heartbeat with the way you held me in the morning resting your head on my chest and i swear my breath turned silver the day your hair did like i swore marigolds grew in the folds of my eyelids the first time i saw you and they bloomed the first time i watched you dance to the tune of our kitchen kettle in our living room in a world that could have left us hard as metal we were soft as nostalgia together for fifty years we feathered wings too wide to be prey and we flew through days strong and through days fragile as sand castles at high tide and you would fold your love into an origami firefly and youd throw it through my passageways until all my hidden chambers were filled with lanterns now every trap door every pore of my heart is open because of you because of us so i do i do i do want to be in that room with you when visiting hours are for family members only i want to know theyll let me in i want to know theyll let me hold you while i sing ba be de bop de ba ba baby im so in love with you im so in love with you ba be de bop de ba bop be be da bop ba goodbye 2