On Marrying Monkey

Katy Ellis

When I marry Monkey it is mostly for his voice. He was the howling one, the screamer who drew my attention from the Mayan ruins of Tikal to the height of the jungle above me. I wish to join him but couldn't leave the two-legged man who had escorted me through Yucatan like and adventurous father, a lover too old for his woman. But Monkey knew my name, blazed soothful truths across the canopy. My name in a tongue I had forgotten. So I climbed to him without grace and full of a desire to learn vines as pendulums; branches as bridges; the leaps and bounds of faith. Now traveling the way we do, over roots and from branch to branch, we never touch the ground or become attached to the people we meet, the countries we see because we know by holding on we deceive ourselves. Unlike Monkey I must always practice and I sometimes worry he will tire of screaming my name; of circling back for his lagging love on days I forget to let go.