to my wife on a monday morning.

I wasn't drunk.

My wife and I tend to enjoy understatement. We constantly feign disinterest whilst laughing and loving passionately. In the morning, I will gaze at her lovingly and say, 'you're all right for a chick.' or 'i love you more than a doughnut'

And surely, when she reads this, she hears those echos. It's a nuiansce that's lost in the translation quite a bit. However, I think there's a greater point about love and how it's not just when it is beautiful and easy, but also when it's ugly and sick and miserable. And even in those times, when i am, or she is, miserable and sick - living a life full of dead fish and influenza -- our love still grows. In fact I suspect it might grow more.

The message of this poem is not about the comparison of love to the sores or the fish gills, but instead to the moments of two lives being lived together through good and bad times, all whilst growing stronger and deeper and more true... and ultimately leading to slices of heaven that are beyond beauty and the understanding of those fickle souls who can not or do not see it through.

• stephan