Paul wrote a love story.
It was a hate story too.
Overall on the imagined scales of justice
love outweighed hate a hundred to one.
The problem was a linear story
weighs things at different times.
There was a plot point two-thirds of the way
through the story
that hate in the fictional wife’s mind
tipped the scale against her husband
on the day she learned
he had an affair with her sister.
Although both Leviticus and Deuteronomy
prescribe death for adulterers
the wife chose leaving
the house that was not a home anymore—
to not be a wife anymore
and to find another hand to hold her hand.
Being in her thirties she was not afraid
of dying of loneliness.
She packed her few things and left
on a great American road trip.
She discovered in her third hotel room
that she did not miss
the sound of manly feet on the floor at night
or picking up his socks from around the house.
The day she was in Taos New Mexico
she saw a triple rainbow against the mountains.
She declared it a sign.
A new life fell into place as if waiting for her.
The man who once was her husband
married the woman who remained her sister.
She did not attend the wedding.
copyright © 2021 Kenneth P. Gurney
Umflop 