I found out, by accident, about
something you’d done to your wife,
soon to be ex.
You raged at me,
said a lot of things
you didn’t mean, like
“All men are shits. Women
just have to deal with it.”
I said, “This isn’t the worst crime
mankind has been known to commit.”
You told me if I ever breathed a word—
as though I would!
You wouldn’t remember,
but you were a glamorous figure,
the beleaguered young father,
telling me at the coffee machine
that we twenty-four-year-olds had no idea.…
You were only thirty-six.
But that was old to me then.
Once you told me about your tenth
anniversary: walking home from dinner
together, you’d reflected that the marriage
was dead. Didn’t like each other
one bit, or so you said
you’d said.
I remember telling my husband about it
in bed. What was he trying to prove?
he asked. I wondered, too,
but you stayed in my head—
baring the tarnished honors
of your sexual rank to instruct me,
and the picture of you and her
not holding hands, discussing
your mutual dislike like a savings bond
you’d cash in if things
got worse. It was the kind of uncalled-for
honesty that’s nearly antisocial,
but momentarily seems the only thing
that’s real—you know, fuck the rest
of them who never say what they truly feel.
A critique of conversation between
men and women, a token
you couldn’t know how I clung to it,
replaying it mentally on our anniversaries,
silently thanking you
when it wasn’t true of us yet.