All my life I’ve shown up late.
             But when I do, I compensate

for my delay — I laugh and preen and carry on
             as if I had been present all along.

I stayed in utero, for instance, two
             weeks after I was due,

then came out so decisively and fast
             I couldn’t breathe. I spent my first

night on earth alone inside a tent
             flushed full of oxygen, the event

from which (my dad believes)
             have sprung like fires all my weird anxieties.

Mostly I can’t see myself at all
             until I sense in someone else a parallel,

like how I only realize what
             I want at the moment I attain it,

my mind the final part of me to know.
             I’ve hurt people I love being so

late to my desires. Last year, I met someone I thought
             I couldn’t live without, and in the process lost

another, without whom I thought I’d
             die. If I had only realized

sooner, etc., etc. But I handled things ineptly
             and he left. I didn’t die. Instead, I went to therapy

and saw the stegosaur uptown, stayed with friends
             and drank a lot of tea. Even then,

riding the bus to visit my new lover,
             I was breathless always, early almost never.

Excerpted from COUPLETS: A Love Story by Maggie Millner. Published by Farrar, Straus
and Giroux. Copyright © 2023 by Maggie Millner. All rights reserved.