The evidence hid in your jeans.
Dinner for two at a restaurant I
suggested. Now those jeans
and its brothers are ornaments on the lawn.
I was resolved to engrave
“I hate you” on my face
but then betrayed by the leaking
that stained my coral cheeks.
A rosy plush blanket twisted around
my toes as I surveyed the emptiness,
yet crowd, the room held. Numb
fingers lifted the “I love my daddy”
binky, a present from the shower.
Moving from the room, the glass
shards of girlhood sliced the soles of my feet.
I brushed a misplaced rattle, its stars sparkled
through my vision, and heard bubbly small
talk being made across the hall.
Rinsing away the news
I dismissed your pictures in my mind.
Now with diapers to change and
plastic bottles to fill, I live for someone else.
My feet duplicated the pattern of a day,
and I cursed the verb I felt.
