She Wants a Poem

She wants a poem.
Not tomorrow.
Not when the clouds move.
Not when I've untangled the knots I've been wearing around my neck.
She wants a poem.
Now.

The request arrives so gently it almost escapes notice.
But it lands heavier than the things I've been convincing myself mattered.
The unfinished work.
The unanswered messages.
The bills.
The static.
The season where my own reflection has been waiting for someone else to return.
In the in-between where I’ve been living.
Where colors lose their names.
Where music sounds like a memory.
Where artists forget how to create.

Then she says, "I want a poem."
As if she doesn't know she's asking a drowning woman for water.
As if she doesn't know that every word started somewhere inside her orbit.

Still, the dust settles.
The noise leaves the room.
The weight I've been dragging unhooks itself without rebuttal.
Because some requests aren't obligations.
They're invitations.

She doesn't need explanations.
She doesn't demand brilliance.
She doesn't ask me to become someone I've misplaced.
She simply wants me to make something beautiful.
And suddenly, I remember.
Not how to write.
But how to listen.
To the space between heartbeats.
To the silence before a sentence.
To the invisible thread that stretches between two people who have learned each other's gravity.

And that's what love is.
Not grand gestures.
Not perfect timing.
Not waiting until you've healed enough, or rested enough, or become enough.
Just someone believing that beneath the exhaustion, beneath the silence, beneath the dust collecting on your gifts.
The artist is still there.

She calls to that part of me.
And I answer.
The world can wait.
But she won’t anymore.
Because in this noisy, impossible life, there is one voice that quiets every other.

And if she asks again tomorrow,
I'll do it all over again.
Because the truth is—
She never wanted a poem.
She wants me to remember.
So she whispered,
“I want a poem.”

— Tami Jo Urban