Don has the authority and Peggy has the emotion, but that’s in the past. She wears the pants and Don is crying alone in his apartment. Peggy lives in the not-knowing, each breath a gasp. Don lives “in the now” and “the know.”
His failures are a ladder, and she climbs it wrung by wrung. Her hands reach up but her feet hesitate to follow.
They are two parts of a stumbling whole. Their pasts, a splintered truth.
One small tear at an ankle, could bring them to their knees.
When Peggy needs Don, he is glad to be needed, but it is the needing that desires, not the work. The needing is a haunt
Peggy asks, “what do I know about motherhood” and Don takes a moment. He simmers in their intellects. He lets her stew.
She looks at him: “you love this,” and he does, but not in that way.
He loves what she is capable of. She is Manhattan. She is growing and growing. Her arms are pulsing with the blood of the next century.
When they dance to Sinatra, it is like every childhood memory they wish they had, except she is not a child and Don is not her father.
There is a tenderness there, in their package of equals.
Their sale is not dependent on their cleverness.
Their sale is not dependent on their skill.
Their sale is dependent on their love.
And when Peggy puts her head on Don’s shoulder, and the moon outside is wide-brimmed, their love is pinned in the stars of the city. Their love is based on their independence. They both only know one way, my way.
© Umansky 2014
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blog of poet, leah umansky 