One thing that was interesting about the first piece she read was the subtle ordering of the words and how each word relates back to the other words even though the whole piece is rather sparse.

My husband just walked through the front door and said that to me. It’s what he was thinking about on his morning walk with our dog, Lexi—last night’s poetry reading by Mary Reufle. He didn’t even say Mary Reufle or Reufle to identify her. He just said her, like he was saying aloud the last part of something he’d already started saying to himself during the walk.

My husband doesn’t write poetry or read poetry or even like poets much because of what happened to me in 2009. He’s still not sure exceptions to the rule in poetry are actually exceptions. He’s not sure there are actually any rules at all where behavior toward female and female-appearing poets is concerned.

I’ve tried to tell him the exceptions are exceptions and that there are ways to stay safe within the poetry community. I’m navigating all of that myself. My initial response was to leave poetry and never write again. But that is not living. I managed to eek along for seven years. I took up birding. I took up weaving. I love birds, and I love fiber, but I also love words. I loved words first—well, second right after classical music—just as soon as I was able to navigate language, which wasn’t easy because I’m dyslexic.

What a joy I found language to be. An absolute delight. A place to play, work, imagine, create, build, live, linger. I was thrilled to see that Reufle’s reading had an effect on my husband, that her reading helped loosen language up for him. He’s a software engineer who doesn’t have a lot of flexibility with words and finds writing and speech tiresome. He’s also dyslexic but went in a different way in his life: away from language rather than toward it. Or, rather, toward a completely different type of communication, the many languages of code.

We have a safe word for poetry readings and other outings. It’s a phrase, actually. If either of us says the phrase, that means we’ve seen or sensed some kind of red flag, and we need to leave the situation. After what happened last year with the couple at Snow Canyon State Park in Utah, we’ve realized we can never be too careful. We’re especially careful around poets.

I’m glad the safe words weren’t what was rattling around in my husband’s head this morning. Mary Reufle doesn’t know it, but she and the entire audience at the Poetry Center helped my husband feel like I’m safe, or at least safer, in poetry these days. And he feels safer, too. Now, he can play inside poems like Reufle’s and find new things to love about language—within those sparse words that do so much vital work.