The Other

We find the lady at her vanity,
suspicion curling through her like smoke
fingering a field of burning straw.
Beyond her silked shoulder she can see
the rough delineation of the joke
life’s become: a man with wood to saw.

He was seeing someone else, she knew.
The visage in her mirror proved the case,
not perfume or foreign lingerie;
her own reflection whispered it was true:
the evidence was written in her face.
One could only look, and look away.

But one was not defenseless, not at all.
One was not without some wherewithal;
in ranked amphorae full of tincts and scents
were charms to philtre time’s impertinence.
“Coming, Hon?” he yawns, patting the duvet.
“A sec,” she hears the other woman say.