You were not who I thought, dreamed, expected. I had hopes, no reservations, just Matthew McConaughey posters, Kate Hudson on repeat. Every verse about marriage, spiritual ties with high purposes: I believed in plans and prefiguring.

You looked at my ears when we spoke. I calculated scuff marks, imagined tattoos and what I’d do when I found them.

You kissed me. A bit like in movies I’d watched in which the girl helplessly stands until someone sweeps, swoops, ships them. I was ready to be polystyrene packed, a brown tape seal on a damp box.

I don’t take down the posters, still pray to Tom Cruise that if he has a fourth wife, not that he’d leave Katie but, if he did, that he’d consider it, me, us. I make hot chocolate for Caleb and sleep in his arm pit. I was born Catholic.