You must know

       
You must know there are times
I will not choose you over the poem;  
nor your email, text or pouting silence
over the verse;  
  
Bulging zippers will not sway me  
nor swollen suitcases by the entrance.  
If you want to be first in someone’s life    
you must know, it can never be mine.    
  
I'll never be the faithful wife  
skinning vegetables at the sink;
a gimlet eye’d grandmother supervising,
starched apron and recipe splayed
submissively across the counter -  
contents spooned carefully;
the roast, flayed, awaiting its wake -
attendees of potatoes and carrots
following into the heated pyre.    
  
I'll never be the faithful mistress  
in a négligée holding a drowning olive  
after a cocktail party --
  
alarm at attention so we don’t oversleep
alerting your wife to your late absence.  
  
I'll be in the tub with the poem instead;
gluttonous ink splashing imagery  
over its porcelain skin with each spit  
of candle and stroke of pen.    
  
You must know, in bed I'll fantasize  
about the poem, how it carried me    
shielding my isolated survival
from extinction, while hunted
by laundered mindsets
firm in sects of belief.  
  
You must know the poem  
is 'One Hundred Years of Solitude',  
a plantation abandoned by death;  
it’s 'All the archived Names'  
without Ariadne’s Thread;
the Life that Pi actually dreamt    
'The Shipping News' reporting anthologies
modern American beats underground;  
it’s 'Water for Chocolate' torched  
by match heads; it's 'Midnight  
in the Garden of Good and Evil';
it's Romeo; it's Juliette.    
  
You must know, that if betrayed  
by lies or entrapment I will escape    
elope, even commit suicide  
before captured alive;    
  
we’ll die together, deeply inhaling afterlife  
as Plath – taping your sleeping existence
away from us, towels caulking the frame;    
  
and you, you must know  
you'll wake lonelier than you’ve ever been.    
~