GRACE LEE

 

I’d be your wife

 

I’d be your wife –
For all I expound about desire and caritas
And that dusty televangelist, marriage –
With you I’d drive a glossy thirsty SUV
And dig a moat around our quarter acre.

I’d slide into simulations with you,
Refine euphemisms with you –
I’d be fevered, surveilled, sick,
Post-ironic, anaemic, optimised to the brink,
To join our hands on dotted lines.

I’d hate to be somebody’s wife;
But nobody’s just somebody, especially not you
When you sit on the pavement
And dig an apple out of your bag
And the sun breaks out
And everything turns gold.

If I were your wife, it’d be sweet
In a moony stoner jam sort of way; I’d
Make nut butter and spreadsheets
And perhaps in time
Press a kind pillow over the face of my love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Grace Lee is currently based in Auckland. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction and holds an MPhil in renaissance literature from the University of Cambridge.