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Joe

My wife thinks she’s so smart with her little red wagon full of secrets.

She pulls it behind her closely, picking up different deceptions as she goes and adding them to the mound that weighs down the bed.

Initially, there were only a few, but as the years have passed, she’s gotten bolder.

With each seemingly undiscovered lie or omission, she digs another hole in her grave, but she doesn’t know that.

She thinks she’s crafty. She covets that red wagon of lies; it’s her comfort blanket, her proof that she has the upper hand in our marriage, that she’s not the boring woman her sisters are—she can’t possibly be, because look at this and that and this.

I understand her far better than she understands herself, which is a good thing.

She’ll never see how broken she is, won’t fully appreciate that I’m still here despite all those broken pieces.

My wife is my favorite puzzle to put together, and sometimes I like to rearrange the pieces of her mind just to keep it fresh.

Maybe one day I’ll break her in the process, but I doubt it. She’s a fighter, like me. A lover and a fighter, all rolled into one fucked-up enigma.

I wouldn’t want her any other way.