The Tradwife's Dilemma

How to become a thing without a mind.

I was a girl that liked to do things right.

To learn my marks I studied Donne at night.

I scanned and metered, counted calories. 

Then by the rules I formed a family.


He made me his estate. I took his name.

From pdfs I learn’d the kids to tame.

From Instagram the tricks to being fit

and recipes for dinners candlelit. 


My sixth turned six, and I sought something new.

Trad tricks on how to feel—to keep things fresh.

The Reddit wives said, “Dear, don’t feel, just do.”

(I didn’t mean sensations of the flesh!)


Oh goodness, what chaos this quest did bring.

My only choice? To ask an ownèd thing.

Vape Pen was silent so I asked the Chair.

Oh child to feel would be too much to bear.


Good Chair, I smugly said, I bear the earth.

See? Twigs for ribs and holes I burned in me

when babes, my very own, wailed at my switch—

Not you! Chair snapped. It’s he who’d have to bear. 


The rhyme was off. But still he blundered on.

To own a thing with feelings is a sin.

It makes a man a slaver. (No iamb.)

You feel, he sins, and that’s the way he’s damned.


So now I am a thing without a mind. 

At least, pray God, no mind a god can find.