Everyone lies except the bathroom scale. Take me. My husband thinks I can’t cook Italian. It’s not that I can’t, I don’t. His first wife cooked humongous dinners. Every night. After 10 years of marriage she weighed more than he did. Once, she said she was still the same skinny girl like from before, only on the inside, not the out. That was in couples counseling. He didn’t fall for it.

Last week I seen this old photo hidden in his desk. His mom and ex opening some dumb birthday gift. Side by side. Looking like identical twins, the big-boned kind. Hello, Dr. Freud? Stop snooping, my husband tells me. We had a terrible fight. But it was worth it. The makeup sex was outta this world. Afterwards he pinched my tush, kinda hard, saying what a handful. Asking do I still work out. Yeah, I say, three times a week. It’s not a lie. I’m gonna do exactly that. Starting tomorrow. Nobody needs to paint me a picture. Not nobody. Not nohow.

Roberta Beary

is the haibun editor of Modern Haiku, the co-editor of Wishbone Moon: An Anthology of Haiku by Women (Jacar Press, 2018), and the author of three award-winning poetry collections, including The Unworn Necklace, which received a finalist book award from the Poetry Society of America. Her collection of prose poetry, Deflection (Accents Publishing, 2015), was named a National Poetry Month Best Pick by Washington Independent Review of Books.

Her writing has appeared in Rattle, KYSO Flash, 100 Word Story, Cultural Weekly, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and is also featured in A Companion to Poetic Genre (John Wiley & Sons, 2011) and Haiku In English: The First Hundred Years (W. W. Norton, 2013).

Ms. Beary lives in the west of Ireland with her husband, Frank Stella. She tweets her photoku on Twitter [at] shortpoemz. You can also find her on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robertabeary/