Dark Secret

I have kept this poem for years, hidden in my private notes in facebook. Reading it again now is like punishing myself with a reminder of how madly obsessed I used to be. Like a horse driving a Calesa, whose eyes are covered with blinkers…couldn’t see what’s at its rear or at its sides. But my blinkers were never forced on me. I chose them to drive away continuously without distractions. To escape a marriage that was doomed from the beginning.

The past He of my life, was after all a big lie. He had made me believe that he was a real man. And looking back at those times that I’d felt so much frustration as to how I would ever succeed in my efforts to please him, I now see the justification behind the cold nights and the daily fights. The justification behind the sadness and anger that I’d always see in his eyes.

The He that’s in this poem, had after all been just a mirage for a woman like me, who, then, had longed to feel passion in whatever form I could take. I had been denied the ardent fire in heterosexual relationships that I’d hear about in stories from girl friends and their boyfriends, from married couples bragging about how honest and relaxed they are together. And I’d often wonder how in the world I could ever reach that point of sensual abandon with someone whom I’ve exchanged marriage vows with? So much so that I had become so weak through the years. And as soon as the He in my poem came knocking me off my wits, sweeping me off my feet, with lines like “I will die wanting you”, and “And you’re the hottest Mom on earth”, I broke. I gave in. I gave in, just at the perfect time when the He-that-was-after-all-a-big-lie, exposed himself deliberately, divulged the skeletons long hidden in his closet. Yes, he was a tenor turned soprano, a muscle mary, who had married the most clueless girl in class, taken with his mysterious, snobbish, and soft ways.

Now, I wrote to share this poem, though I don’t seek sympathy. Only an understanding about how deep a woman’s heart can be. That this secret of secrets can be told but hidden in a poem so haunting, that the writer, herself, doesn’t even want to remember.