A Housewife Doubts.

Her washing line blooms with her morning’s labour,

She takes time to unburden with the widowed neighbour.

Chai is on the stove taking a bubbling simmer,

“He may want you more,” shares the widow,

“If you were a dress size slimmer?”

“A dress size slimmer? No, no, it’s not that,” she said,

“But doubt’s made a home inside my head.”

Tea is served in her finest china,

Her hair is oh-so perfect, just like her liner.

The biscuits they share are scarce and broken,

“We’ve said every word that could be spoken.”

“Every word?” said the widow with a furrowed brow,

“Sometimes it’s not what you say, but it’s all in the how.”

“You doubt yourself, my young bride, but what of him?”

“What does he bring to the table?”

“Well, he’s young and virile and more than able, but,”—

—“Ah,” the widow cut-in, “but a little unstable?”

“Yes,” she sighed, “moody, and a control freak too…”

“Well,” curtly said the widow, “maybe it’s him and not you?”

Frustration leaked a tear upon her liner.

“I could’ve been a dentist, maybe a designer?”

“What was meant,” she huffed, “never came to be,”

“I swapped studies for shackles and married at twenty three.”

“Times are changing or changed,” said the widow,

 “In my day I didn’t even own my voice.”

She drained her cup, “back in my youth, I never had a choice.”