The Should Have

Sometimes everything worked out as it should---

everyone said what they needed to say,
everyone was safe,
and love was not muddled in the mess from the past,

and maybe it was true,
maybe we could move forward,

wounded certainly,
stitched up in the aorta,

with clouded tear ducts,
and scars of significance,
like the kind our grandparents took to the grave,

I did not want you to take them away,
and we would not let you do that,

they were not the defects you deemed them to be

just the same,
you could tape our mouths with tape,
if you had to,

but we would still eye each other,
finding every which way from Sunday to say those three words,

just the way we would have all along