You don’t look good —
Though,
Neither do I,
Why would I look happy,
With these tears in my eyes.
You’ve mentioned before,
I look “so pretty” when I cry.
I’ve asked you for help,
You’ve tasked me to try.
I’m lying on the floor,
Coughing up lungs,
While you’re lying to me,
“…what!? That? I haven’t done!”
But I know I caught you two kissing,
And again, back then, I began sobbing,
You said like it was the first “I was so pretty,”
heartbeats my head throbbing.
I couldn’t stop screaming,
The same question of “why?”
You said it was “help” that I needed to find.
So I called on a doctor,
And I upped my prescriptions.
When I arrived home,
You asked to look at them.
You scoffed as you scanned them,
They shook with your clamber,
You poured out some handfuls,
And said “Take these with water.”
I knew they were working,
I felt much more vacant.
I also stopped crying,
Which I knew that much you hated,
You often tried to push me to tears,
I kept nodding off on the sconces,
Staring blankly and so pensive,
You hated me and all of my languish,
So, when you noticed me slurring,
And also that I was all empty.
You convinced me that day and my memory
Of you and her in the car kissing,
Was completely awful for me to be thinking,
“You’ve never done it,” I repeated.
“The girl at your office, it couldn’t have been
Her and her husband we vacationwith!
When they come to our home for dinner
Her and I connect on such a deep level.”
So,
I went back to my doctor,
And I expressed “I’m compulsive.”
Eyes on my thighs asking “how can you know so?”
I told him “I’m certain,”
That “I’m a bad wife, “
I let the words hurt-felt,
Fall right from my mouth.
I said “I’ve accused my husband —
Of kissing a colleague.”
“Though, it never happened,
my memory is faulty.
I’ll be accountable— I have been lying,
I’ll be needing more help”
He nodded; in my file scribing —
With looks concern; agrees to my pleading.
He focused his head away from my floral
His pen “cah-click” jotting into his journal,
He tore out some pages,
And said “Okay. Go on be a good girl.”

© Betty B. Goodman