1950

You were a housewife
dancing along with the radio—
skirt fluttering like hands
to the popular songs
as I sulked with Billie Holiday
in my domestic prison cell—
waiting for another night
of half-sleep & candy pills.

You were enthralled
with arranging flowers,
cooking dead meat
& I looked at them both
as cadavers coming back
to haunt me.

Your husband came home
to a pot roast & cocktail
while mine only received me
drowning in vodka & expectations.
The boulder of
trying to win at something
I was never prepared for.

There is an art to creating a home
that you've mastered—
I floundered along
with thick limbs
& a wish to run off to Paris
& pretend there was nothing to life
but words & movies projected in the sky.

A good wife is made from recipes,
fresh perfume & a need for complacency—
my cloth is cut with birds singing in Greek,
stale cigarette smoke
& bouts of ennui—
punishing myself nightly
with searching for blind spots
& finding none.

While you were practicing perfection
I was painting a still-life
where everyone's favorite fruits
were rotten with mealworms
& I was left holding a cleaver—
staring at it like it meant something.