& wants to read hers instead. He loves her metaphors, & she doesn’t use the word blue or glitter as much as I do. My husband calls me stupid & boring, yells at me for leaving a pair of socks on the floor & calls me an idiot for dumping the clean laundry on the bed. He kisses her when I’m not home & spends nights over at her apartment while I watch reality tv alone on the sofa where I caught him fucking her just the night before. My husband yells at me for spending money on books & flowers & threatens to cut me off. When I argue that it’s my money, too, he grabs me & throws me into another room against the bookshelf. My poetry and literature anthologies fall as heavy bullets around me. I take the gun out of the safe & give it to the UND police department, I hide the sharpest knives in case my beautiful husband gets uglier. I book a trip to the cities & stay at a hotel with 20 floors & an exquisite bar. & I’m on Tinder & in 20 minutes flat I have hundreds of men vying for my attention. I choose one who is well read & looks kind, & together we dance at the Gay 90s while the dance floor fills with bubbles & I’m drinking Red Bull & vodka. His arms explore every inlet of my back & waist & the rivers of my red hair caught in his fist. He kisses me like it’s the last day on earth. I follow him to his apartment which overlooks the city & let him slip the thigh highs off. He looks at me as if I have caught the moon in my mouth & we spend the night crashing against the walls & floor. In the morning we are curled up like two kittens in the sunshine & we don’t know each other’s middle names, but in this moment, tenderness is all I want. I write this exact poem & tuck it behind the coffee maker next to the missing kitchen knives, & my husband reads it a week later on his way to work & howls like a shot werewolf, but I’m already packed & gone.