do unto others

she’s still there, despite his attempts
to cloak her in invisibility by mirroring
their intimacy with me
and failing to utter her name.
she sits passively on our would-be party-line,
listening to him whisper stories she has never heard,
weaving a secret life with the purloined passion
she doesn't even know she's entitled to,
bearing witness to the spark of something tangible in him
that still escapes her. uncomfortable, she lies
beneath us, between us, watching silently
from the foot of the bed as i knowingly perpetuate
the cycle of girl-on-girl violence. she fights back
when and how she can, dirty but weak,
staking her claim in extended silences –
minutes, hours, days sometimes – between
a call, text or email. she gets the kodak moments:
family vacations, grocery shopping, holidays, lazy sunday afternoons.
to hear him tell it, i get the whole of him, she just a part. i own him body and soul; she owns his heart.