we're all stories in the end

Why You Should Never Marry A Poet
Heather Bell

Think about it - the way that credit cards, bougainvillea,
vacations, dictionaries, the road on the way to work will

all never be enough. The poet wishes
with her deepest bones
and writes that she wishes
she would have killed you

in the supermarket. She wonders why
she ever loved you in song.

She publishes book after book. Each line detailing
how your hair is ugly and monstrous in the morning. And how,
like moss, you cling to her
so piteously.

But you marry her anyway.
and she looks like a roar of snow
in white. You figure she will read a poem about you
that day in front of everyone: her throat

is, after all, a stamen
or matchstick.

But she is silent, says only the I DO’s
and a few Bible verses.

The poet loves with a most violent
heart. What you have not known -
she has wanted to tell you the truth
all of these years,

but grew silent as an old lover does
at eighty. There is no way to say

how one loves the ache of your cracked lips,
the heavy belly of your tongue, the years she spent
feeling not loved,
but still loving. Think about it-

the poet is fearful of others knowing and finding your mouth.

She is frightened of you -
realizing you could have been
loved better or harder
or with real words.