the birds didn't tell me.

pushing back your covers, wiping away sleep;
seeing me, or the absence of me--
a virus inhabiting a body, sharing a bed,
a house, a life, a marriage, but
refusing to share that which makes a woman
truly and utterly a woman.

not with you.
because I gave you my posture, the bounce in my stride,
the grin so wide it hurt every time I smiled.
I put on a coat of pounds that warmed the feeble bones:
shattered confidence. broken girl.

would you see me if I listened better?
if I shut my mouth and closed my eyes?
if I let pain push deep within and make the blood
stop the bleeding?

what manual tells a woman how to love
someone she always had, but never really did?
for that young, naive take on romance,
on starry eyed place settings at dinner parties
seen in movies and in upper middle class society--
were those not the conventions for us?

when I said goodbye to my family home,
when the man who gave me my wit, my sharp tongue,
my fast feet, when he closed the door, and I left,
sobbing, pleading to go back in,
where safety cocooned my childhood,
tucked the memories in cardboard boxes,
stacked precariously high in the room that raised me,
trading tears for dance displays in a smudged mirror,
dust settling still.

a new man, a relevant man, he took me away
and educated me on good: "be good."
a good wife is
one who obeys, submits, cleans, cooks, opens, closes,
hungrily, dutifully, like a fish with flakes of food
as invisible companions.

no book taught me to fear self-destruction
or to sense the tide that crashes into fledgling happiness,
not two days old--to rip ripe peaches to a meaty pulp,
letting the juice spread at my shoelaces.

dear __ , I loved you entirely too true.
I lost my heart in strands of your hair, pieces of dead skin
engulfing my pillow case and our old sheets tangled
around sweaty legs, feet, arms scratched raw.

I didn't see that when the papers were inked
you put the parts of my heart once yours
next to your name--signed it away
to some better life,
one with a good wife, a good life,
a child, yard, and a three car garage.

I only got to see briefly what was not
meant to be mine.

I took off my sundress,
dipped my toes in the water,
and submerged my body,
embracing yours steadily,

remembering I am already good,

in the then and in the now.