This Ruse You Call Necessity

after Advice to Myself by Louise Erdrich

The baby teeth are intermingled,

my addled brain not thinking to keep them separated.

After the Tooth Fairy came and went,

what was left was lost babyhood and a sham

perpetuated that I was prepared for motherhood,

or even the role of wife.

I failed as the knife rusted

and the wooden spoons splintered

after a trip through the dishwasher

that I should have known to avoid

if I was half-equipped for kitchen duty

or any kind of domestic chore

that my father handled with such aplomb,

while my mother wept or swept

or spread the bedcovers and her gloom.

What did I know of strife kept behind closed doors?

Such a wife was my father’s undoing, I thought;

she left him no choice but to stray.

So I learned from nothing,

slipped through every inauthentic day-to-day,

maintained the illusion that I could perform

the role by cleaning out the crisper,

washing the brushes weekly in bleach,

keeping up with the papers,

placing the last puzzle piece,

thereby appeasing the God of Immaculate Order,

High Priestess of Maternal Failure.