I don’t much know what she looks like.
I couldn’t tell you the color of her hair
Or the shape of her eyes
And if you put me in a crowd next to her I could spend years searching for her face
And never realize she was standing right next to me.
Because I don’t know who she was,
And her name is blank in my memory but
I know she had one because
What else would my father call her on those late nights my mom spent calling him,
Only for the 30 second condolences left by the voicemail recording,
No.
I don’t much know what she looks like,
But that doesn’t stop her from walking into my memory,
My mother’s memory,
All wide smiles and dark shadows and long fingers interlocked in his,
Interlocked in my childhood because
The other woman,
She doesn’t need a face to haunt me.
All she needed was four months and suddenly
She was lurking behind my closet door,
Under my bed,
The places in my head where the dark things hid,
She made a home behind my eyelids,
So that not even nightlights could protect me.
The other woman was a parasite,
And I watched as she wormed her way between them
Spreading sickness Redbull ***** could never seem to cure,
******* the love and then the life and then leaving them for dead.
Sometimes I hope that when she closes her eyes and lays down her head,
She can still taste it on her tongue,
The bitterness she created when she decided to become
The other woman.
She had hands like hammers and I never knew a home could be as fragile as china,
But watched as shards of porcelain fell at my feet,
Glowing red and blue.
Watched as my mother tried to pick up the pieces,
Her shaking hands always carrying more than she could hold.
Watched as my father, the artist,
Handed the paintbrush to the other woman,
Her masterpiece,
Our destruction.
Watched as the other woman became the only woman
Who could rip my heart out of my chest and still remain unknown.
Recently I met a girl in love.
Even with his wife and kids.
And I recognized the other woman in her smile, her laugh,
In her eyes which glowed happy.
Happiness I could never achieve because
I was the kid whose father stopped tucking her in
When he found a better pair of lips to kiss goodnight.
The tightness in my chest wouldn’t go away because
She told me I should try it.
But broken homes aren’t ice cream flavors.
Empty beds aren’t party drugs.
You don’t take a ruined life for a test drive and
I know now that other women exist,
But I could never hold a match to a family just to start a fire in my heart.
I don’t much know what she looks like,
But I know she’ll never look like me.