Pronominal NuptialsI chose pronouns as the nodes for my connect-the-dot matrix because they contain so much relational information—fitting for a celebration of relationship. Pronouns express number, per-son, and gender (or neuter gender); they announce whether they’re the subject or the object of a sentence—the doer or the recipient of the action—and suggest animateness (I, she, he, you) or inanimateness (it). They can also indicate reflexivity (each other) and discreteness (each). Their metareferentiality (their function as substitutes for substitutes) has the dual effect of pointing to the indescribable spaciousness of identity and standing in for an assumption or summary of “known” identity—even more than nouns, pronouns are designed to be used as both variables and constants.

In my cards to you, I used first-person plural pronouns to spell four (for our fourth) because these pronouns capture some of the energy, joy, and tension of the nuptial. We, us, ours, ourselves bespeak allegiance, affinity, shared participation in an activity. When I use them to refer to you and me, I feel as though they erect an invisible force field around us. Whenever I think some-one is confused about my status, I make sure to use a we—as in Pooks and I—sentence. Really, it would be difficult not to talk about myself in terms of us because I’ve spent over a third of my life sharing ideas, meals, tents, trails, showers, yogurt, bread, chocolate, peanuts, beds, and bodies with you, or longing to do so. Usually, to say I instead of we would feel like a half-truth or a glaring omission. And we is not an agreement that I enter into easily: I distrust so many uses of we. I sometimes even feel too separate from friends to call them and me we. For years now, I’ve trusted you and me as we, us, ours, ourselves.

The moats edging you and I in a nuptial we can bleed into each other, and these confluent edges can give rise to either mutual protection or erosion. Many nights and mornings, lying next to you, I feel our bodies are the same, and the weight, warmth, size, and hairiness of your leg between my legs feels perfect. Touching your warm belly, cupping your penis in my hands, squeezing your plump butt can feel like the most basic kind of nourishment—how I imagine it feels to eat food you’ve cultivated on your own in the most worm-beloved dirt. Sometimes, our moods and rhythms synch and harmonize without effort, and the day passes in ease.

But our confluent edges can also become erosive when we internalize assumptions about each other, and pre-program ourselves with reactions based on those as-sumptions. Our blurred borders can also be dis-torting when we confuse our identities; I have the nonbeneficial habit of pinning my worth on you, and getting down when I haven’t made progress on my own goals or when I feel I’m a burden to you. And, of course, a near-combus-tive friction can arise between us when we disagree totally and believe our identities would be compromised if we conceded at all to the other’s position.

In our fifth year of mar-riage (and beyond), I hope to restore a little integrity to my sense of self and support you as you refine your vision for life. I hope to find ease with-in myself, so I’m not always itchy in my own skin and ashamed. I want to reestablish my center of gravity, partly so I can blur into you without losing my sense of self and so I can be kinder to you. You and I as us and ourselves on our anniversa-ries and in between.