Making Love To The Same Man For Fifteen Years Poem by Leah Browning

He has a tattoo of your name on his left bicep,
a relic from his time in the Navy.

You know all of his freckles and scars,
the weight of his pelvis, the smell of his skin.

So when he finally leaves, for good this time,
and gets his own apartment

only a mile away from the house
(so he can still see the children) ,

his side of the bed grows unnaturally cold.
He comes back once or twice—

it's not a clean break—but the air is pregnant
with the idea of other women, of the nights

you know he's spent lying on top of someone else
in that freshly painted apartment.

So you throw yourself into your work,
closing the door at lunchtime so no one will see you

cry, and feel like a bad mother because
all the good parents remembered to bake

cupcakes or cookies for the sale at school
to raise money for an owl rescue fund

and you forgot. If it were up to you
right now the owls would all die out.

And then, one night, you run into
a man you used to know, an old friend,

and your ex-husband has the kids
for the weekend, and you end up going

out to dinner at an expensive Italian restaurant
and sharing a gilt-edged plate of tiramisu.

He calls you every night for two months, and then
one weekend when the kids are going to be with their father,

you call and offer to cook him dinner,
and under the dress you wear a black negligée

which you bought during your lunch break
the day before. It's almost identical to one

in your drawer but it feels like a fresh start
nonetheless. You forget to put on any music, though,

and there is an awkward silence as he's undressing
and you see the bare nooks of his arms and can't help

thinking of your ex-husband, his tattoo and all those
freckles, and the memories flicker back

each time the body doesn't look or feel
like the body you've known for so long,

but still you go on making love to a new man
feeling aroused and self-conscious and new yourself.