Sometimes we didn’t

have time to shower

before we had to return

to our spouses, our hours

limited by the depths of the lies

told to buy that time.

Those times, our skins unclean

and yet purer

than they’d ever been,

I felt less guilty, the

smell of you

on my body

easing my conscience

when my wife asked me

how my day had been

and I lied as easily as though

my tongue had been born

to tell anything but truth.

What cruel people

we were in our love

for each other. What

cruel people we had to be

to save our love

for each other.

We wish our others well

now that we are gone

from their lives, our cruel selves

no more, now that

no false words are needed

to disguise our truth, though

their shadows remain

as such shadows always do,

like dirt on the skin

that an ocean of showers

can never remove.