I hadn’t been gone more than two minutes, but something important—my wallet, a key, an address, the diaper bag—had been forgotten, my sister and her young daughters stopping through on a break from long flights, waiting in the car as I dashed back into the house to retrieve the item from my office. It was a weekday, a weekday that saw most grownups of the world working, earning, rearing children, driving cars and carpools, paying bills, mortgages, taxes, a weekday when husbands I knew trusted their wives and those wives trusted their husbands with their infants and toddlers, with mealtime, with bath time, on the changing table, with putting the baby to sleep, a weekday when I was one of those wives, a weekday when he didn’t hear the slip of deadbolt or the snap of latch or the drum of feet as I hurdled up the stairs, two at a time, or my soles clomping down the hallway, when he didn’t notice the rattle of the brass knob on that old five-paneled door or the groan of hinges, when he was transfixed at my computer, undeterred as he communed with the screen, when his hand rode his dick as if any second that blindfolded blond was going to pop out of her flat world, those huge tits bouncing, and help him reach the stars.

Lyall Harris is a visual artist and writer whose poetry and prose have appeared in The Minnesota Review, The New Guard, The Dewdrop, The Perch Magazine, The Vincent Brothers Review, Prose Online, and elsewhere. Her book-length poem Barrier Island is forthcoming from The Black Spring Press Group. Harris’ book art is held in numerous Special Collection libraries, such as those at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Yale and Stanford.