Love, Conditional
My first memory of our marriage
is a grammar lesson:
possessives, conditionals.
If you were mine,
you would do everything
I say.
Twenty years later
I tell myself: no regrets —
the lie my father handed down,
the one your mother
called love.
I’m wrong.
Your sinister grin
settles in my son’s cheeks.
My son — not ours.
He doesn’t belong to you.
Even three years dead,
the rot of your morning breath
burns against my face.
Your last memory of our marriage
is a legal lesson:
no contact.
Stay away.
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