ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING
was that his lying
drove me crazier than
his infidelity. He was obvious
with his flirtations,
sloppy with his lies,
flaunting the evidence
as if he wanted me
to police him toward what
he thought he wanted to be—
a good man, a good partner,
kind and loyal. That
fantasy I too believed,
because of a certain tenderness
that opened between us
during his telling how,
when his father lay dying,
he had come to the bedside,
the nurse coaching him
as the patient’s breathing
changed—”Now. Take his hands”—
and he had done so, learning
in that moment (he said this
with a sincerity that never
returned once we started
living together) more about
life than about death,
about being responsible.
A year after he left me,
he sent his forwarding address
in a self-flagellating letter—
no details except the transition
had gone harder than planned.
I already knew through friends
of his latest fling—the woman
he’d left town with, already
history. Warn her, I joked
to a mutual friend, thinking
of the new one in my place, in her place,
in hers and hers.