Happy Pride!!!

This piece was published previously in an online zine that went on hiatus about a year ago. Even the Wayback Machine has struggled to access the archived zines since, so I thought I’d post the piece here in honor of Pride Month. (Here’s a link to some links, if you want to give it a go! Sapphic Writers Zine, https://www.queerzestzinefest.com/sapphic-writers-online-they-them/)

Wives, by Kaia Ball

Wife was a life sentence. Incontrovertible destiny. 

They taught me to cook, clean, sew and knit, gardening and canning. My skin was obscured, exposed pieces polished to ruddy shine.

Wife was my purpose. I existed as a counterpart, as the hammer is to the carpenter. My strengths, my talents, my intellect would all be tools on his belt. Honor thy husband, cleave to him always. My feet learned ballroom dance, my knees to curtsy, my lips to smile without showing teeth; all the while hating the man my excellence would belong to.

Woman fit like an itchy sweater, like shrunken jeans, stung like cheap jewelry staining my ears green. So I reaped the harvest of my scalp, stripped the paint from my cheeks. Discovered that I breathed easiest with a bound chest. 

When you came to love me, you took nothing. You unbraided the leash, liberated my collarbone, told me I should give only what I had in excess. You called to me with my new name, new pronouns, new titles.

But I asked you to call me Wife. To try it out, after all this time. 

I watched you do it, lips painted the way Michelangelo showed you. My soles met earth. I finally understood the yielding of cherry, the sap of maple, the vitality of a forest.

Being Your Wife is driving across town with jumper cables to rescue your coworker’s nephew’s girlfriend. Being Your Wife is making lasagna from scratch, and finally trying ricotta because your grandmother hates cottage cheese. Being Your Wife is crying at movies, because you’ll never think less of me for it. 

Your Wife is my purpose, as birdsong is to the thrush, as shrikes build fences. Our scriptures are Gibson, Butler, Feinberg. Gender, zie wrote, is the poetry each of us makes out of the language we are taught. 

You teach me to care for my cracked cuticles while your acrylics dry.

I teach you to cross stitch, embroider, how to count out a waltz with a competent partner as well as how to backseat drive an amateur. I give my dowry of skills, all the training, all the practice to you. You tear the bridal gown into handkerchiefs, bandages, handfasting cords. 

We crash symposiums, hoard old books, fight over documentaries, loiter in museums. We join knitting circles, storm out of book clubs, get banned from bird-watching. 

Roommates? they wonder. Best friends? they ask. Sisters? 

Wives. We say, cheeks cracking, giggles barely swallowed. This is my Wife.