Contingency Plan

Poem by Melissa Balmain

If I come down with it and don’t recover,
I hope you’ll find yourself another lover—
somebody smart and kind and never rowdy
whose inner weather isn’t ever cloudy,
who cooks as if she sprang from Julia Child
and sings so sweetly, thrushes are beguiled,
who doesn’t make you fix the lamps and plumbing
or clean for guests you’d rather weren’t coming,
who finds your point of view completely valid
re: eating Oreos instead of salad,
who reads the same archaic tomes that you do
and likes to pair them with erotic voodoo…
in other words, your dream girl to the letter—
except she looks just like an Irish setter. ◊

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Melissa Balmain is the Editor of Light, a journal of light verse. Her collection Walking in on People is often mistaken by online shoppers for some kind of porn.