Wednesday, February 11, 2015

The Woman I Married

You are not the woman I fell in love with.
You are not the woman I married.
You are not.

The woman I fell in love with had perfect tits
and an ass most fly,
but she concealed these gifts in
plain sight so well
that even she no longer believed
that they were real.

The woman I fell in love with offered
apologies to everyone for everything
as though it were an essential phase
of a peculiar brand of cellular respiration
for organisms such as her
that have a biological need to constantly express regret
for taking up any space at all.

You are
not that woman.
Not
anymore.

The woman I married
was a master of disguise.
She snuck from milestone to milestone,
creeping between each grand accomplishment and dignified honor
as though at any moment the sirens might blare
and a SWAT team might descend
to take her away
and the worldwide news outlets would all report
how this little girl of negligible talent
and marginal intellect had ever
managed to defraud so many people
so many times.

The woman I married held her opinions
tight to her chest
vetting each of her words carefully
running background checks and
compiling a thorough dossier
before granting
them access to her tongue
for fear
that the air might fill with imaginary insults
the second after she left the room
and all the smiling faces that
she called friends would agree,
Oh my Gawd. What a bitch!


You are not the woman
I fell in love with
and married.


You are a shape-shifter.
Every morning it seems
the passage of night transforms you into
Someone stronger
Someone braver
Someone more self-assured
with more confidence
who commands more respect.

Listening to you calling out hippies
for all the ridiculous shit they believe
or extolling to your prudish friends in completely
unapologetic detail the many virtues of S&M and anal sex
without the slightest bit of fear or shame
is like music to my ears.
You are a song whose sweet melody
takes years
to begin to hum along to

And while you are not 
the woman I married
I love you and
I admire you
now more than ever

And judging by the trajectory of all 
the things I can measure
I will love you more tomorrow than I do today
And next year.
And next decade.
And next century.
And if I had a billion lifetimes
I wouldn’t waste one of them

without you.

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