Women Who Untangle

She took my headphones in her hands, and one

By one, unwound each knot the coils had spun

Deep in the dungeon of my forest green

Windbreaker, where the pocket always seems

To coax and twist each wire’s white length round

To a straightened noose of stultifying sound.

Of course, I am no suicidal soul

Who seeks in death and solitude his whole

Salvation from the stress and strain of life

Once he has ceased in the serrated knife

To excise ghosts, ameliorate pain,

As warm blood follows glass into the drain,

Though in my time they’ve been confiscated

By orderlies and such; but unrelated,

Wasn’t it the first woman that I loved,

When she was seventeen, and I removed

From childhood only by a single year,

Who, with an almost wifely care, would tear

And take the Apple from my hand, and pleased

With her authority and command, seize

Upon the slightest emblem of neglect

As though it offended her intellect

That the one who wooed her should otherwise,

For all his merits, irritate her eyes

With such disorderly habits? And so

I remember myself just ten years ago,

And thereupon think of a decade hence

Where, at some lame and tedious event,

My wife—whoever she might be—annoyed,

Fixes my collar in the mirror, cloyed

With all my grumbling, and proves her dominance,

Her dexterous fingers’ gentle influence

Reminding me that I’m her property,

My life with her a chosen slavery

Wherein, in perfect irony I find

I’m both her mamluk and her concubine.

And so this girl, both beautiful and stern,

Mild as a bird, with a will that I would learn

To follow and discern uncomplaining till,

Her wisdom proved, she rules me at her will,

Toils away at that Gordian gadget

I won’t replace with some AirPods just yet.