My wife knows I have a mistress.
She’s okay with that.
My mistress and I engage daily,
whispering sweet nothings,
tumbling together into comfort,
easing into ecstasy,
our lines twisting,
melting into one delicious whole.
Sometimes my wife watches
As we make love.
I take my mistress in,
giving her my all,
my passion, my heart, my soul.
I feel my mistress as though she were a part of me.
I love her,
and cannot imagine life without her;
can't imagine the empty existence
life would be without my
sweet muse.
I feel her lines with heart and soul,
with every part of my being.
My second love and I are one,
just as my wife and I are the same soul.
My wife may get irritated when I’m late for dinner,
or don’t slip beneath the sheets as early as she does.
But she doesn’t mind my mistress –
my second love –
living with us.
My second love is writing.
###
Eric D. Goodman is a professional, published writer and editor. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Baltimore Review, Writers Weekly, and On Stage Magazine. This is the first poem he's published on Gather. Eric’s novel in stories, TRACKS, is a contestant in the First Chapters Writing Competition. Read and rate chapter one here!


Comments: 39
Lucky you have a wife who understands...
I get 'kisses from the doorway' from my husband.
And would you believe it if I told you that I wrote this on a train? Really - coming home from the FOSE convention in DC day before yesterday!
Don't worry ... I won't turn this into a shameless TRACKS plug. (Or did I just do it?)
Oh well, might as well direct everyone back up to the link in the bio above! Although most of you have already read it -- and I thank you for that.
In fact, that is what I spend most of my time doing, as I have been for years.
Writing could be referred to 'the second nature', 'the inner self', poet's 'beloved child', but not a 'mistress'... According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the word 'mistress' indicates: 1/ a woman who has power, authority, or ownership (of the house)
- Are you controlled by your own verses?
2/ something personified as female that rules or dominates
- It is more like inspiration, not writing itself?
3/ a woman other than wife with whom a married man has sexual relations
- Can you imagine making love to your own creation works?
You produce your poems in a wedlock, not devour them in loneliness, right?
I understood from the beginning that it must be some form of art, though.
Mine has a mistress too, sometimes he leaves her on my side of the bed and I have to beg "Please come move your guitar!"
Excellent writing!
H Marie