WEBVTT

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This next poem is
called I Met My Wife.

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Everything I say in it is
true about how I met her.

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I met her in Amherst,
Massachusetts,

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which, as you know, is the
home of Emily Dickinson.

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I Met My Wife.

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"I met my wife in a bar

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You could throw a Frisbee from

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And hit Emily Dickinson's grave

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Which would be uncool and not.

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Until that night,

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My whole life had
been a conference

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Where voices amiably disagreed

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Until paralysis ensued.

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When I looked in her face,

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Something, actually, for
the first time, spoke,

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Saying home is where
you've never lived,

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Not yet.

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What else?

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Before she said it, I knew
her Old Testament name.

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Home, as everyone
knows, is hard.

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In each room,

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The most terrible
moments keep lasting

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Obscure, green, velvet,
continual past light

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From under every doorway
pours into the hallway.

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You are drawn to enter in fear.

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It's horrible and good to go
through each door in every room,

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To keep standing in
that green light,

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To spread your arms and
take it into your fur.

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No fantasy is ever better.

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Still alive, you open your eyes

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And go back down the stairs

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To find the other in the
kitchen, stirring something.

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Someone says, have a cookie.

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It won't kill you."

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[LAUGHTER]

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