To the Woman Who Came After Me:

Do not forget your lineage,
where you fall in the chronology.
I am the one who prepared your way
cleared a path in the tangled thicket
of his heart
filled and smoothed over potholes
in his healing
cleared ragged cobwebs
from his mind;
my body was a bridge
between his pain
and your happiness.

If you breathe deep
you’ll detect my scent
on everything he touches.
It was his broken words to me
he picked up
and handed to you;
whatever pleasures you share
we practiced first
we rehearsed
the scripts and lines
he utters now
he called me Love
long before you.

Remember your place.
He only beat me to the end,
I only regret my patience.
He is a garment
a not-fit
I do not miss
but first washed, mended, folded
and put away.
If I pine it’s only
for loneliness
not for him.

I neither want nor need
your pity or sympathy
just your acknowledgement
I had as much to do
with your life today
as he does,
that I called you sister
before you called him lover
that I washed
the dirty laundry and
weeded the garden before leaving,
that my heart bled
into the sacrificial chalice yours drinks from,
that my very flesh
served you
warming your nights
cooling your anxiety,
that I
perfumed your entrance.

It was I.
You will never be able
to repay your debt to me,
so pay it forward to she
who comes
after you.

© S. Rinderle, 4/2016
Published in Fixed and Free Poetry Anthology 2021.