Universal You
I'm in my head. Thou's in my body.
My husband has a different definition of ‘you’ than me.
“You were critiquing me,” I say, straddling him on our bed.
“I wasn’t critiquing you.”
His hands are behind his head, cupping his hair. His brows kiss into each other with confusion.
“What do you mean? You said, ‘When you prioritize schedule, you can’t prioritize quality.’ That’s a dig on my quality.”
“No, it wasn’t a dig. In English, ‘you’ is universal.”
“What?”
“The English you is you all.”
“What is you?”
“Thou.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, we just stopped using thou and never made a new you,” he says.
“This explains a lot,” I say, still perched above him, sitting on his stomach, with my hands on my hips now.
He smirks. This man takes nothing personally. He doesn’t have the vocabulary for it.
“So, you don’t think I’m sacrificing quality?”
“I think thou has great quality. But if you prioritize…”
“Oh stop,” I say, dropping my head in toward him and my hands alongside his head.
I bend into his neck. He hasn’t washed his hair with shampoo in years, and his hair, on its best days, smells like actual fresh air. Like him. I smell him. It’s a best day.
“Thou drives me nuts,” I say. Then I bounce on my hands and knees above him. Making his body flop on our mattress. A pillow falls onto his face. I growl and bounce again like I’m playing ‘monster’ with our toddler, who’s probably eating lunch at school right now.
“You’re so weird,” he says, pushing our quilted linen throw pillows to the ground.
“You mean women in general?”
He laughs and shakes his head. He’s looking me in my eyes from below in that way his words never quite nail. The look tells me he sees me. It’s what I’m always worried about. More than his idea of the quality of my art and work - if he knows me. I’m smiling from the evidence that never fills me.
“Why the cute face?” he says.
“Oh, I love you,” I say.
He smiles.
“No, not thou,” I say.
He pushes me over onto the bed alongside where he is and moves atop me.
“I love you, too,” he says.
“How much?” I ask.
“Plenty.” He says.
“Careful,” I say. “Or you might arouse me.”
He leans in and kisses me on my mouth.
“It’s too late for me,” he says.
“Do we even have time?” I ask, letting my American self-sensitive individualism push him away one last time.
“Plenty,” he says.
I smirk. “Maybe enough for you to come, at least.”
“Enough yous,” he says.
