Things I Didn't Know I Loved

PROMPT: The title, of course! This is my list poem. Yours could expand on one subject, listing many aspects, as I did. Or, you could list things that were unrelated.

How in a high-rise hotel in Chicago

you dressed in yesterday's clothes

and trotted down to the lobby to get me
shampoo the housekeeper forgot and

coffee from the Starbucks.

How when you returned you
pulled a banana from each pants pocket,
smirked and said in your best W. C. Fields,
"It really IS because I'm glad to see you."

How I watched you undress for your shower.
You folded the wrinkled blue pinstripe

neatly on top of the gray slacks, then put

socks, boxers and T-shirt on top
and placed all in a drawer beneath the TV
separate from the clean things.

How even dirty you are button-downed!

How as you did all this
it looked as if your body watched me back--
belly soft from bloody-marys and beer after work
but hips as tight as ever like two fists
and then the sandy plum that winked from between your legs
as you bent over for the lower drawer.

How vacation with you is

good food, hot jazz, a funny stage show.

How we ditch the museums after lunch for love and sleep

and live instead in the night.

How all this I didn't know I loved

runs through my mind as I hear the water

wend over you in the shower.

How when you are dressed again--

a clean fresh pinstripe (this time burgundy)

and gold trousers shot with black--

you fanned the fingers of both hands,

flipped one palm up and out

and the other palm down and out with flare,
as if to say Ta-da! and said instead,
"Do I look okay?"

How you do.

How you are so much more than

OKAY.

How this part here is

the one part I never want to miss.