I have my pride. No hubby named Billy to caress me when my poetry is called amateurish and my one thin layer of protective skin, showing more wrinkles than yesterday has cracked and scattered over my keyboard. I don't care. I am still here, patient and full of fantasies angry and full of shit. Married men write me sonnets that their wives don't want unless they are written on green paper.
Paychecks matter in suburbia.
Here in Brooklyn too, but I am rich in rhyme and don't want a mortgage. I lie to myself quite frequently. If I wait long enough he'll smoke his cigar paper pot and want food from mama's loving hands. I keep it all on simmer. If it burns I have failed.