Half Wives

I’ve been to the insides

of other men’s wives, 

their better halves,

their half-lives.

Have I felt remorse?

In the moment, not once.

Am I a perverted deviant,

consumed in erotic trance?

Or just a selfish bastard

of a thousand eclipsed suns?

I couldn’t tell, and even if I could,

I wouldn’t, truth be told.

For deceit isn’t linear;

it’s a conspiracy multifold

designed not for the faint-hearted,

but the very brave and the bold.

Lies you tell yourself

as you wake up to her;

orgasms don’t beget guilt, 

not on land, not in water.

I’ve seen wives turn backs

to marriages stale and cold;

stranger hands are often

the warmest hands to hold.

I’ve seen forevers at grocery stores,

ready to be auctioned and sold, 

because she was fond of new beginnings,

and routine was for the dying and old.

I’ve seen loyalties trade hands

because democracy is what love is, 

too many choices and numbed nerve endings;

how do you tell blisters from bliss?

And when they went back, because

it’s only fair to be homebound,

at the plastered ruins of wrecked homes,

I stood like a thirsty bloodhound —

hoping it’d all crack up again.

Am I even sane? Am I sound?

Who could, for sure, tell —

with their own homes razed to the ground?

Because sin was never about sex, 

it was about the hunger to feel.

And every time we borrow love,

we repay it with what we steal.