Today, I am the other woman.
Well, not THE other woman but another woman.
You see, I’m not myself, so I must be someone else.
Someone like me, who I am most other days, does not hide
does not steal away from the controls to cede the center.
Not the spotlight but the hub, co-equal and convergent.
But all the other mothers took my role today, the hiders
much-to-doing but not without martyred smile and cheer,
disposed to giver-worker-bee-busy-as-a-buzz-on-beer.
But I have always been eye of the storm where the stillness
of separation–me from them–oxygenates breathing space.
And yet today, I played her, the subdued sideline spectator,
the other woman waiting in the wings to seduce the shadows,
bait them cover me in downy anonymity, cog-less care free.
Who is she, this other woman impersonating me?
In the gaze of the other 