Tame Tulips Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

The tulips you sent sit gently on my desk
Next to the sepia print I had framed in silver
Of our wedding day so many Mays ago
When I was still a blushing maid
And you were a dashing sailor
Soon to be off to sea leaving me
As alone as before we met.

Do you remember the first time
That you asked me to dance
And I took your proffered hand
And let you lead me in a reel?

Or was it a cotillion?
I cannot recall
For in my memory
We danced them all that night.

And since that very first ball
And that very first dance
You have been the only man
That has ever seemed real to me.

So through the years as you have left me here
To pursue your career in service of Her Majesty,
I have taken the treasure of letters you have sent me
And spun your sailor’s tales into nautical novels
That tickle the fancies of stationary ladies like myself
With too much leisure and too little freedom
To find enough ways to make the days pass.

Every hero is you.
Every villain is you, too.
Every plot line, every dramatic crisis
Comes from somewhere in our correspondence.

The secret to my popular success has always been
That I tell the same story, our story, every time,
I just change the names and locations
And add a few superfluous subplots
And pepper the dialog with double entendres
And leave every woman believing the hero loves her.

When really I am writing a love letter to you
In hopes that while you are at sea you will read me
And find yourself still amazed and amused after all these years
By what a woman can do with nothing more than a pen
And a mind as open as the world is wide.