Secrets My Husband Keeps

I plug my guitar into its amplifier
minutes after I hand her the cell phone
and wave her down the avenue.
This October weekend she will not hover

around the PC like a drunk moth batting
itself to death against a screen door.
She left it all for stone wall silence.
Our kitchen gleams with her absence.

Books remain on shelves, towels hang
on hooks, kisses do not blow.
In our queen size bed, suddenly generous,
I conjure her return—skin fresh with solitude.

She’ll be torn between kissing me, and a quick dash
to the keyboard. Flush with the need to tap her fingers
in a battle of punctuation, minefields of commas,
but I am armed with full lips.