HUSBANDS

They present me with a bill
because I wasn’t happy,
and always amaze me with their vocabulary.

They request a receipt for my fate
and encourage me to think
that because of my cat
we live in the wrong town.

In a time of national struggles
they refer me to my mother
as if the fact that I’m a mother is a fiction.

A few of them serve cake
that I bake, and want thanks for the invention of electricity,
winter, and jam.  That I don’t like jam
doesn’t matter, because anyway they are editing my memoirs.

Secretly in their hearts they think I own stocks
which I’m not likely to share
and when I arrive to distribute my borrowed gifts
they are always too tired or concerned with proportions.

They pronounce the word ‘narcissism’ with closed eyes
                              as though sucking on a water pipe,
muttering at me with disgust
as if they were slamming a window on a draft or a bug.
When I stopped being afraid
I saw they had targeted my need for air.

When they leave, they forsake the emptiness of their cups,
and in return tend to take my dictionary with them,
disappearing into their lives like the land into the Dutch sea,
without leaving me any language in which to stir my pain.

HUSBANDS