Eileen Trauth
Eileen Trauth is a poet, playwright, and author. She has published several nonfiction books and an award-winning play, iDream. Her poetry appears in Ordinary Time (Kelsay Books) as well as in venues such as Braided Way, Common Threads, Loch Raven Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Persimmon Tree, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Pink Panther Magazine, Sheila-Na-Gig online, and several anthologies including Conversations, For A Better World, and Within Us. Eileen is a member of the Greater Cincinnati Writers League, the Ohio Poetry Association, and Fourth Friday International Poetry Group. She lives with her spouse, Kathy Driehaus, in Cincinnati, Ohio. www.eileentrauth.com.
27 June 2025
How many years have you been married?
The old lady asked across the counter,
kind eyes twinkling at my celebration cupcakes.
Forty-eight, twenty-one and ten.
We joined together less than a decade
after bloody Stonewall riots said enough,
four years after psychiatrists admitted
we were healthy after all.
We sealed our commitment
with a piece of paper,
first chance we had, proclaimed
it mattered that we pledged
our troth in public.
Then came the day the judges
ruled we had a right
to walk with pride
down any state’s aisle.
Our anniversaries arrive like drips
of lifesaving liquid pumped
into parched veins, nurture us –
for now at least – until justice,
like the provisional IV pole, rolls away.
