Telling Him I Kissed A Woman by Megan Falley

I cut the pill of truth
and served it with honey.
A half-lie, I said

we were drunk.

Painted us starved,
in dresses of gin, egged
on by the barstools.

Painted myself stumbling
onto her face,
more so than an actual kiss.

Painted it as if cameras were rolling.
An image he could beat
off to, instead of curse. Said

it meant nothing

And how could it?
I was straight
as a wedding aisle.

I touched
his beard. Begged him
to stay. Insisted

it was only a kiss

and hoped he wouldn’t hear it
in my voice, how it sounded like

it was only a decade.
It was only a war.

I didn’t say there was no bar,
no audience except
the magnetic poetry falling

to the floor as she pressed me
up against the refrigerator, beaming.

That I felt more in that
one kiss than anytime he thrust
his tongue down my throat,

or wouldn’t get a condom,
or wanted it facedown.
I swore

it will never happen again.

He called me a whore.

I said

I love you.

He called me a bitch.
I said

Labels: Megan Falley

The Honest House by Megan Falley

In an effort not to crawl back to you, I crossed the 2 train off my subway map in blue ink,
called it a river, sold my canoe.

Swept the soot from the chimney into a vase, scattered it all over Manhattan. Husband, I
pretended it was your ash.

Spoke your name in past tense and still, when we found ourselves in the same bar,
phoned a mystic. Told her I was seeing ghosts.

When you confessed your mistress, her red hair, her scars, how you learned them from
up-close, from inside out, you were no longer the man I married but a dead deer in the
center of our swimming pool.

Our dog has always considered you a burglar. Knew to spit, bark, bite before I did. Once
while you were sleeping, I stitched her electric fence through your skin. I wear her shock
collar on nights I go out drinking, on days I can’t find a reason to stay away even though
you have left so many behind.

I’ve watched you with other women. The way you hand fruit to supermarket clerks, how
your eyebrows lift at anyone with fake nails. Your favorite party story is how you once,
publicly, pleasured a girl with your band mate’s drumstick. It’s no wonder we don’t
love the same music.

On our first date, I bought a dress off a woman in Brooklyn so I could stay with you one
more day. Last week I threw your clothes from our roof knowing they would have fallen
faster had there been a body in them.

When I found a picture of your ex-lovers tits, used as a bookmark, I began opening every
novel upside down like a teenager shaking birthday cards waiting for cash to fall out.
This explains my love for fiction. We were never married. The dog is not ours.

While washing the dishes I watch from the window as the children we never had drown
in the piss-filled pool. I’ve never tried to save them. I invented that pool, this sink.

Did you know that the metronome inside us quickens when telling a lie? I want to build
an honest house, where the motion detector is so sharp it knows when my thoughts leave
the room. Where the clap-on lamp works as a polygraph. When you swear you still love
me, the lights flicker.

Labels: Megan Falley