After watching a wife-swapping reality show. Not reality here.

Reality Shows

When we married,
she was sixteen
and flirtatious. She’d hug me
in the bathroom as I
shaved, her hands working down
to my pajamaed hips, then a light
caress on my open front, her
fingers searching inside,
for bared hard flesh,
her mocking laugh a tease.
I complained.

Control your daughter,
I said. You smiled. She’s just
a teenager, you said. She
has her boy friends. You can meet them.
Yes, I met them on our couch,
after midnight. You often sent me
downstairs. Check up
on them, you said.
And more than once
I sent them running
bare-naked
into the frosty wind.

Your daughter smiled,
picked up her clothes,
and went to bed.
But those nights when she was
college age,
books littering her room,
she left her
door open, and invited
me inside. Those closed-door studies
we did, I might regret. But the love
she gave, you never
duplicated.
Now that I’m gone,
don’t you wonder why?