The calm was worn out of her.
For decades, jesus ****, ---tens… of … *******...years,
She had abstained, held back, postponed and missed out.
Somehow she had become the Mother Theresa of kind gestures,
The one who helped
And healed
And hovered
And hoped,
Oh god how she had hoped,
Until standing in front of the mirror
In Bloomingdale’s basement,
Her lips chapped and her mouth parched,
In some obscene sort of spiritual dehydration,
A pre- catatonia,
And sensing the up swell of a hurricane of self-hatred,
So overwhelming
That it numbed her fingers and made her nose itch,
In this instant she could not tell
Which side of the mirror she was on.
Was she looking at herself or was she the reflection of herself.

In this messiah moment,
When a massively disinterested sales clerk asked her
If she had found what she was looking for,
In this exchange with a stranger with a name tag on,
Her life stopped.
And for the first time ever she responded, yes I think I have.

So she bought the dress which showed way too much cleavage,
Wore it out of the store and into an uptown bar,
Where she surveyed the 5 o’clock crowd,
Found the face of a man she had never seen before
And walked up to this stranger in a suit
And offered to buy him a drink.
He accepted, Jesus was it really that easy.
They exchanged maybe twenty words,
She knew exactly what she wanted,
And she shivered twice,
At the end of a dark corridor,
Bent over a cold aluminum beer keg,
A fistful of her hair in his hands,
Her ******* wrapped round one ankle,
The dress now a sash about her waist.

And so her secret life began.
She didn't tell her husband,
Or her priest,
She took a part time gig
At a massage parlour with the happiest of endings,
And she felt powerful and a little insane.
Sitting at Sunday dinner, smiling and engaged,
She wondered if she was a sociopath, a closet ******,
How could deception and promiscuity
Bring her happiness,
Where honour and fealty had failed.

She worried about others finding out,
It would destroy her life if they did,
Disgrace was a terminal disease at her stage,
Her heart would panic each time she entered the salon,
Each time she had to parade nearly naked,
In front of a new client,
The moment before she entered the room,
Would she know the man on the other side of that door,
Was the risk worth it.

Time after time she decided it was.