The Bigamist Poem 2

The Bigamist Poem 2

She was not the secret,

She was the daylight mistake.

Introduced with careful pauses,

As if truth could be softened by tone.

She learned his habits quickly,

The way he folded silence into lies.

Every answer rehearsed twice,

Once for love, once for defence.

There were photos she never questioned,

A past framed and carefully cropped.

Names changed shape in his mouth,

Dates slid easily out of reach.

She played the role she was handed,

Wife by ceremony, not by time.

Standing inside a borrowed future,

Furnished with another woman’s years.

Sometimes she sensed the imbalance,

A weight she could not explain.

Love leaning slightly the wrong way,

As though history pulled harder than hope.

The first wife cried where no one looked,

Tears carried with dignity and loss.

Her sorrow, unacknowledged and endured,

A warning no one chose to hear.

That sorrow waits its turn,

It will be the second wife’s tomorrow.

Pain does not disappear when ignored,

It only changes its address.

The selfish, greedy man broke many lives,

Leaving damage he refused to count.

When asked why, he offered no remorse,

Only, I am a highly sexual man.

Sometimes she sensed the imbalance,

A weight she could not explain.

Love leaning slightly the wrong way,

As though history pulled harder than hope.

When the truth finally arrived,

It came without drama, without collapse.

Just the quiet alignment

Of lives he could not erase.

She did not steal a life,

She stepped into a gap left ajar.

A second beginning built on omission,

Signed with a name already worn.