Since the divorce,
your hair’s grown curlier.

You tell me you’ve got a garden
to yourself and a goat.

Your eyes are greener
than I remember,

your tattoos redder
and longer and stretch

wrist to elbow
in amaryllis and bluebell.

Your laugh fills up
the thrift store,

and mannequin heads turn
only to be disappointed

you’re not one of them.
Perhaps that’s what your ex-husband

thought, and so he found
a girl child, just as stiff,

but you don’t seem to mind,
with that new goat

and a bed to yourself.

Dave Malone is a poet and playwright from the Missouri Ozarks. Recent work appears in Science Write Now, Skipjack Review, and Delta Poetry Review. He can be found online at davemalone.net.