My husband and I believe communication is one of the keys to a successful marriage. Which is why we haiku.

I write:

The house is a mess.

I refuse to clean alone.

Will you never mop?

To which he replies:

Please forgive my lack.

Tonight, love, I scrub for you.

On caring hands and knees.

Of course, we don't haiku every time we need to discuss stressful matters.

Sometimes we sing:

"I went shopping today (I sing to the tune of 'Happy Birthday')

"And bought your daughter's prom dress.

"Please don't get too upset.

"It was very expensive."

To which he replies, a la Stevie Wonder:

"Don't you worry 'bout a thing.

"Don't you worry 'bout a thing, Mama.

"'Cause I'll be waiting here at home.

"To give you mo-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-more (money)."

Certainly, I'm employing a bit of literary license here as I report on our marital correspondence. The fact of the matter is, I don't always start the conversation. He doesn't always finish with such Prozackian calm.

What is not fiction is the reality that brought us to these modes of communication.

Who among us doesn't know communication is essential in a marriage, along with regular physical intimacy, more than enough money, harmonic parenting styles, and in-laws who know when to show up and when to stay away? Yet, even without the gender differences intrinsic in marital correspondence — which makes my "Benjie needs a new soccer ball" sound to him like "I will not quit spending until the retirement fund is gone" — face-to-face inter-spousal conversation can be draining, if not downright injurious to heart rate and blood flow.

Which is why, years ago, we started experimenting with different modes of it.

At first, we left messages in each other's computer directories. This was in the Neanderthal days of the home computer, way before every bathroom was equipped with a laptop and Wi-Fi. He'd leave the main part of the house and go down to our only computer, in the basement, emerging half an hour later.

"There's a message in your queue down there."

Uh-oh.

As the message was inevitably about the budget; my personal and professional scheduling needs versus his; or whose family we should visit at Thanksgiving, I naturally would not go flying down the stairs to see what he had to say.

Eventually, of course, I would skulk on down to read, reflect/seethe and dash off my response. In fact, this he-said/she-said thing might go back and forth a few times until we would pass each other in the stairwell and either have it out or look at each other and say, "Whatever."

Soon enough, like everybody else, we got e-mail in our separate offices. This only served to make the stress more instantaneous, unexpected and potentially boundless, though we were pretty good about saying in the subject field, "Warning" or even calling ahead: "You might want to do some diaphragmatic breathing before you check your e-mail this morning."

Then we started the haiku thing.

A haiku, for the uninitiated, is a three-line unrhymed Japanese lyric verse composed of five syllables in the first line, seven in the second and five in the third.

This very precise structure and setup has been a diversion in and of itself at times, as some of our more hastily e-mailed haiku, are not always poetically correct or even spelled right.

A haiku that starts off conveying a controversial need might very well detour into a pithy discussion of the written word.

I feel flakey.

I think I need to breath more.

Sat. should be for golf.

To which I reply, completely, happily off track now:

Breath is breathe, hello?

Flakey has no e, what's up?

Imperfection, gads!

Of course, I would be remiss in saying haiku are only used to address the conflicts and clashes that occur when two people from two different planets agree to share the same bathroom, closet and bed in perpetuity.

The haiku is also used to express love, as Masajo Suzuki well knew. Suzuki, named the premier love poet of contemporary Japanese haiku, died at the age of 96, but not before writing beaucoup haiku:

thin summer kimono

ah, I cannot for the life of me resist

this burning love for him

Perhaps, had Masajo lived, she would have taken pleasure in one of my husband's haiku, written during a recent kitchen renovation:

I love you so much.

Through all the dust and clutter,

Your beauty still rules.

To which I reply:

I love you, despite.

I love you with no reason,

In any season.

Hey, whatever works.