Wife
Reese Carmen Villella
Press your lips into
holy fucking matrimony.
You may now kiss tradition.
Lay your bride down in your marital bed,
and consummate the hell out of
this blessed union.
I was not domestic-made.
When I was still a girl,
I starved my growing womb
out of its providential purpose—
to make me Mother.
I am not one to make one flesh with,
no silver bands on our clasped hands,
not with the Lord’s eye on him—
no saint will become a sinner in my bed.
He ought not to see fire
for mere fleeting rapture.
Not for me.
He deserves a real
American family,
so he made one with her.
He got the wife he always wanted—
she who arches her back
like a saint bent in devotion,
in their cotton sheets,
when he whispers prayer between her legs.
She who cools her swollen feet
on the kitchen tile,
as she clutches the pregnant belly
beneath her gingham dress.
She who never presses her knees together,
for her legs are church and state,
and her husband ought to see God tonight.
She who bears children without protest,
who breathes the words mother and wife
the same way she breathes Jesus’ name.
She who wants for nothing,
who will smile as she groans
her final breath into his ear.
She who was made to be his,
like Eve, as if crafted from his ribs,
molded for his hands.
She who does not stray, does not hunger,
who only prays with her body,
who parts her lips, but only in worship.
She who will die,
with his name in her mouth,
who will be buried in his churchyard,
and rot beside him.
He will kneel at her side like a dog
and kiss her feet all the way up to her stomach,
then he’ll leave one on her sheer rose lips—
pink and parted.
And he will kiss his babies goodnight,
and they will look nothing like me.
I remain the thing he prayed away,
but the taste lingers when he kisses her.
‘Cause I was the body he knelt before,
that he washed his hands clean of.
I am sacramental wine that
fermented into shame, so he spat
me out with prayer after
swallowing me in desperate gulps.
There is no place for me
at his dinner table. I’m not a name
spoken in bedtime stories.
I am blasphemy he still holds in his mouth.
His fingers hover over the wound,
tracing the parts of him I scarred.
He will smell my name in candle smoke
and taste my absence in sacrament.
Shame is just love rotting in the gut,
and he will retch me up in the dark,
call it repentance, call it mercy,
but it won’t cleanse him.
I am the ghost in his vows,
the heresy in his hallelujahs,
the sin he still mouths in secret.
Reese Carmen Villella
Reese is a playwright, filmmaker, occasional poet, and always some form of writer based in New York City. As an artist, she is passionate about queer and female-centric narratives, body horror, and knowing how to have fun. You can find her @reesevillella on Instagram and at Holy Wound on Substack.