The Other Woman
- The Other Woman
Courtney Queeny, poetry, adultery
We reeled around his rooms,where I didn't have to keephouse with his feelings,or wait for him to ring my finger.I unspooled anywayand generous in stairways, halls,the depressions marking doors.He always wanted more, took me
not home, nowhere.Behind his closed doorwe were pure verband it hurt how I wantedto hurt. There were cabs, alibis.It was work.
Stuck in a cramped spaceour nerves were radiant;if inside, we were on the same side.But when he left for his actual lifemy hands grew gray and crepe,unmoored in the world.It opened me up, then broke.
Once he said, Your behavior!as if I'd been miming in frontof a blank wall, a windowless.I tried on guilt,shame. They didn't fit.I tried on nothing,which had lived insideall along. It didn't feel wrong. [End Page 269]
courtney queeney's first book, Filibuster to Delay a Kiss, was published in 2007. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Believer, Black Warrior Review, McSweeney's, the New York Times, and other journals and anthologies. She lives in Chicago.
