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A mother's infidelity

Pulling the door closed with a click,
the spring air pulses through my veins.
With a quick, light, fickle step
I start to feel alive again.
 
As his body thrusts its way to the front of my thoughts,
breath quickens under my jacket.
Heat spreading, baking out from my groin.
I’ll do anything for that scissor-flash of a hint of
a glimmer, a glint, a groan, a growl.
 
The evening class is a great excuse;
it’s almost not a lie. I met him there, my lover-boy.
And now, pushed down in his lover-boy car,
I feel his fingers spread me wide,
strangle a half-cry;
clutch him to my thigh.
Feel nerves half-dead from being a wife
roar, rear up, regain their life.
 
In the aftermath, in the silent hold,
he strokes my hair, licks my cheek, caresses
as if he possesses. As if he has a right;
and suddenly I’m floored
by his brazen brass neck,
by his naivete.
 
And worse, by the hardened relic of what I used to be.
 
My babies, my beautiful, beautiful baby boys
lie at home, warm and safe under the blanket of strength
I’ve been knitting over them for years.
We– he and I– have been knitting, together, for years.
That I am now unravelling.
Pulling to bitter bits and pieces with every seedy,
sordid, sultry, sluttish, stupid, stupid moment.
 
I stumble into the warm air, suffocating.
Steadying myself, I feel pungent bile gather in my throat.
Swallow, swallow - breathe, just breathe.
I’m gasping for air, clasping for a lifeline
in the clamour of the clatter of my horse-racing heart.
 
                                          *
 
At home, he’s immersed in the glow of the computer.
 
A glance whispers a question across the space between us.
I catch it, hold it, like a soap-sud bubble before it pops.
 
He knows, I know.
He does not need this, does not need to know more -
that much I know.
Although I know no more.
Although I no more know.
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