The first time I saw her's pretty face,
so young, too shy, eager to be included,
she was part of the church youth group,
only fifteen. I, just home from a Rotary
student exchange year abroad, wore a shock
of blond hair grazing my older and more
sophisticated brow, was a senior reconnecting
with a popular crowd of old school friends.

We went steady four years, even after I went
on to college ahead of her, until she said she
wanted to date someone else on campus. We
stayed  off and on a couple more shifting years
until I gave her a diamond ring for her birthday,
and because it had been six years. She said
yes because she'd just lost a beauty pageant and
she knew I loved her.  We had already
been a couple for a long time.

Only two years after our wedding, she began
secretly seeing another man.  Kept me in the dark
for six months, because I wanted to believe she
hadn't stopped loving me despite her weekend
absences and our loss of intimacy.  Finding out
her treachery from phone records was agony.  She
confirmed my fears a last time we passed, without
touching, through a house that never was our home