Shadows Remain
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.