A Mysterious Trap

by Ward Kelley

  
This was a mysterious trap I didn’t defuse

until years later, but I think you believed

the premise of your words, at the time,

but had little idea of their consequence.

 

“I admire a man who has the strength to cry

when he’s upset . . . someone who is not afraid

of losing his masculinity.” You smiled quite

seductively, and moved nearer on the sofa,

“To me, that’s a real man.”

 

It appeared an easy price to pay for this evening,

a simple agreement over how real men

are attuned to their emotions. I didn’t believe

it, although there were many things in life

I didn’t believe.

I tried it out, though, many years later when

you said you were leaving, when you named

one of my primary faults as a dearth of honest

emotion.

 

I even chose the same couch for my testimonial

display.

 

A mistake. Such emotion, in the end, horrified you,

and we divorced by the year’s end. Since then

I tell myself that women who say they admire

weakness are really instead looking for strength.

 

This may be true; but as I re-read this poem

I have doubts, again, about what is true,

and now think I may not have wept

properly, and may never.