Once

Young I was, and lovely.
Once, early on, in a blissful post-coital cuddle,
Hard hand soft with love
Brushing my hair from my eyes,
He whispered confession to my ear:
The first time we’d met in person,
He’d come to my office to meet a telephone voice,
Only to find me facing away from the door
And bent over a filing cabinet.
“We became an instant inevitability,” he chuckled.
I could hear his smile in the sleepy darkness,
But now, that once-firm bottom twice what it was,
He tells me that it just gives him more of me to love.
I believe him, almost, sometimes,
But know that he truly means it.
In any case, I can believe him more
Than I can trust my mirror -
Lying, traitorous, pride-sucking mirror.

Once, almost-abs he had,
Never muscular, but very strong,
A runner,
Mile upon mile,
Worn-out track shoes in the bin every quarter.
And now, in bed, I squeeze his arm at the whisper
Of a noise in the night.
Wizened, a deflated olive on a toothpick, but
His back straight for the first time in forever,
Wearing nothing but half-moon reading glasses,
He shuffles out to defend me with,
I kid you not, a sharp-edged what-the-hell?  sword,
Something pulled in passing from the depths of his years-ago closet,
Clutched in arthritic fingers.
And, old fool that he is,
I see in my geezer knight the man he once was,
And the woman he still loves.

What do mirrors  know, anyway?