Through I was always out practically
every night in my wild youth
somewhere in my late twenties
I became more of a homebody
when married

I was fine with going out once or
more a week, like to a restaurant
or a movie

or on a weekend jaunt
shopping or sightseeing

but being out nearly every night
no longer appealed to me

I made the unforeseeable mistake
of being with two women
who became social butterflies
sometime after we married

I learned like a title of an
old country song
“Isn’t It Lonely Together,”
that that song was heartbreakingly true

the better of the two social butterflies
left this world years ago
in her fifties

saw her obit on the Internet
I suspect she died
of a lung or breast cancer
she was a smoker

she was the nicest woman
I’d ever been with
but I had to leave her
the homebody and the butterfly
just could never work out

I wonder if I’ll see her in the afterlife
and if homebodies and social butterflies
will be there

I don’t pine for a redo with her
to see if we could be
happily together in the afterlife

but I do hope she is okay and in
a beautiful place there forever.

Bob Boyd