A Message To My Lover’s Girlfriend

You certainly came as a surprise.
A blip on my Facebook feed,
I nearly missed you.
But, I recognized him instantly.
That is, the man I’d been sleeping with.
The one who was smiling next to you
In your profile picture.

A quick scan on social media told the truth,
That he had so conveniently forgotten to mention.
The facts rolled in and stirred the anger that
Boiled in the pit of my stomach.
Two years together.
Countless couples selfies.
Holidays spent with family.
Sweet nothings posted on Facebook walls.
It would appear that I was the other woman.
Fan-fucking-tastic.

I almost had to scoff at us,
What a pair we made.
And our shared boytoy
So cliché.

Your face was sweet and open,
Dotted with freckles.
Your smile a little too wide;
A result, I’m sure, of a charmed life.
Your build was soft and maternal.
Dressed in pastels and flirty sweaters.
You looked every bit as sweet and wholesome
As your frequent posts quoting Winnie the Pooh
Would lead one to believe.

I am an unsentimental woman,
Who favors bold lipsticks as my war paint.
My smiles are hard won
And for every soft feature of yours
Mine met with a hard line.
My sex is my medium in which I am master.
The landscape of my hips
And the D’s I wear so proudly on my chest
Offer comfort of a different kind.
No one would ever call me sweet and
I have come to love that in myself.

I see that you are majoring in Elementary Education.
Forgive me, if that makes my stomach turn.
I imagined you, filling your class schedule
With macaroni art.
While I had just published my first scholarly work,
On the history of Early American sex.
I heard you singing “Wheels on the Bus”
While I prepared a brief for Mock Court.
It made me wonder what he saw in either of us.

I bet you are the kind of girlfriend
Who brings him soup when he’s sick.
Who has a sweet little pet-name for him
Saved in your phone next to an emoticon heart.
You are the kind of girl that probably reminds him of his mother.
You probably always do it with the lights off.
Men love to date women like you.
They fuck women like me.
And that’s the whole problem, isn’t it.

For a moment, I felt like I had beaten you.
That every night he and I had spent
Tangled in the sheets
Was a blue ribbon for me.
But, I imagined how you must have sat up nights.
Waiting for a “good night” text.
You look so trusting.
I would bounce back from betrayal,
If I was in your shoes.
I’m not so sure you could.

The bleeding heart in me
Wants to tell you.
To enfold you in a sisterly hug
And let you borrow a Taylor Swift CD.
The woman who sits here writing this,
Fueling the fury with songs built on
Unforgiving rhythms and bitchy lyrics,
Wants to kill you softly by letting you find out
In your own time.

What hurts the most is that
Despite the many vast differences
Between us, as women.
I know we both want the same thing.
We want consistency and intimacy.
Someone to share silence with
And inside jokes
And breathless nights.
I don’t know who is stealing him from whom,
You or me?

You are the one who is on his arm
At parties and on the town.
I am the one who spirits him away
In the dark of the night.
You get to be the tragic heroine,
Whilst I have automatically been made the villain.
Just because I want to hold on, a little while longer.