A Strong Woman
“I like strong women,” he breathes, lips a little too close to
my ear, his beer-stained air mingling with mine and I exhale,
heart aflutter, attention grasped, as he continues to tell me how,
“I am not like the other girls,” as if the other girls could never
be quite so lucky, to be in the position that I am in right now.
My mind races with fantasy at the very thought of spending
the rest of my life raising this man, prior to raising our children
and all the while simultaneously continuing to raise this man
just so that one day he can look at my daughter and beam,
eyes shining with absolute, unadulterated pride over how
she is nothing like “other girls,” – so beautiful and so strong,
just like her mother, except – that will never happen.
Because on date three, assuming he makes it to date three,
my smart mouth, equipped with its sharp tongue – entirely
unsuited for certain carnal pleasures – will lose its appeal and
go from “enthralling” to “grating” and when I admonish, it is
not playful and he begins to piece together, slowly, steadily –
though as not to win any sort of race – that unfortunately,
accountability is not a form of verbal foreplay and I am no fetish,
no closeted nymphomaniac and maybe he’ll realize that in actuality
he hates strong women almost as much as he likes the idea of
owning them until they are nothing at all like what he claims to like.