I.

There’s something about cordial kisses first thing in the morning that clarifies the love and gets the day going.

Our lives are more than a repeat of bedtime rituals, laundry piles, due balances, and not-enoughs. Towels. Whites here, darks there. Reds….We dodge the mounds getting ready for school and work.

We are more than our bills on the dining table, piled high like pancakes that never lose their flavor or aroma.

II.

I look in the mirror and self-reflect. Without self-reflection, I am merely a girl in Mudd jeans who copies 112 and Dru Hill songs to blank CDs and gives them to you as musical diaries.

I love being the girl you fell in love with, but the woman in me (who bore your children) understands the landscape of time-tested love: I both am and am not the girl you fell in love with twenty years ago.

Mirrors are so damn honest. And concealer won’t cover yesterday’s troubles or be a primer for tomorrow’s promise.

III.

I need him the way the way a killer whale needs the ocean’s sunlit waters.

Hard times are like orcas on our backs– too heavy to lift sometimes.

Fins– rising and collapsing.

Warm-blooded with thick velvty skin and fragile hearts, we dive in headfirst.

Crash.

Rise.

Collapse.

We are a result of hard work and steady swimming.

IV.

As adults, we have to be careful about being ruined to the point that we raise ruined children.

Staring at screens until we forget the children are there.…Until we forget one another. (I will never forget you, my love.)

So, I savor private moments with you the way I savor pancakes on the weekends with oily-centers and crisp edges, cooked to perfection on cast iron.

And the children– they just love pancakes…

Clinnesha is a writer, wife, mom, meta-artist, and social entrepreneur who feels most accountable to southern, black citizen-artists, elders, children, and families. Her work is at the intersection of arts, culture, innovation, and community.