Chelsea Rathburn

Other People’s Marriages

Our friends who’re married
act happy and sane.
They fuck every night;
they have love on the brain.

They don’t throw the dishes,
punch holes in the doors,
or call their beloveds
cocksuckers or whores.

On dates with each other,
they gaze through their wine
and murmur sweet nothings,
and things really are fine.

But darling, that’s boring –
all that laughter and kissing.
If they looked at us,
they’d see what they were missing.

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Chelsea Rathburn’s first full-length collection of poetry, The Shifting Line, received the 2005 Richard Wilbur Award and was published by the University of Evansville Press. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly, The Hudson Review, The New Criterion, the Cincinnati Review, and River Styx. A marketing copywriter by trade, she lives in Decatur, Georgia.