Hawaiian Supermom

Emily Dickenson’s I Cannot Live Without You, a 21st Century Redux

Look at me and look at you.
Are you serious?
Please.
You want me to live with you?
And you think I’d be happy?
I don’t think so.
Let me paint the picture.
Me, I’d be all cute and everything
Your little trophy wife
And you’d put me up there on that pedestal and brag about me
Because you KNOW I look better than your old hag wife.
That’s right, you know she’s a hag
We all do
Including that old minister you bow down to
The one who keeps trying to get us to consummate
Wants me to give it up to you—
in the missionary position, probably.
But anyway, getting back to that horse you married
You know she old and broken
And I’m the best you ever knew
I’m not busted up and worn down.
But okay so suppose I decided to marry you
Be your wife
Then what? You old and crusty
I’m young
And vibrant
You’d die before me that’s for sure
And then what? You think anyone would want me after that?
I’d be a used thang; not as busted as your old wife though
I’d probably still be cute no matter how old I got
But no one would want me you know why?
Because I’d be a widow
And widows are bad people.
They are.
Despicable and bad.
And look at you.
Look at what you want to do for a living.
I need a man with money honey, not some dude who’s on a power trip
Some guy who praises Jesus,
Even though you know as well as we all do that you are not an angel.
And then you’d drag me
Across the country
Take me away to god knows where
so that you and my memories of everything I ever knew
and have ever known
are all I have
All so you can teach people about God.
Watch them judge you the way you judge them
I mean seriously,
What the hell kind of good are you seeing about that profession that I don’t?
Nothing good can come out of doing that.
And okay, so what if something happens to the boat?
We’d both be lost, suckah!
And if the people revolt?
We’d both be dead—wait they might save you but I know they’d dump me
Or sacrifice me because I heard those people do those things
To cute girls like me.
So no doubt I refuse your proposal
I can’t deal with that kind of life
I’m too pretty
And you’re just not good enough.
So you go your way
And I’ll go mine
And I’ll think of you once in a while, like when you’re sailing
And I’ll wave goodbye to you in my prayers
Goodbye… goodbye…
You were just like a brother to me…
And always will be.

*I originally subtitled this poem: Bitchassness. It was written for one of my English classes at the University of Hawai’i, as an assignment that asked us to re-do a poem written by an American author. It received an A. My teacher asked me to try and get this published because she said she loved it so very much, but after sending it out to dozens of people and getting a bunch of ‘no, it’s not our style but it’s a really great poem,’ answers I decided to publish it here. I figure, why waste it?