Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 9

{Callie's Version}

Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye
That thou consum’st thyself in single life?
Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die,
The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;
The world will be thy widow and still weep
That thou no form of thee hast left behind,
When every private widow well may keep,
By children’s eyes, her husband’s shape in mind.
Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend
Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;
But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,
And, kept unused, the user so destroys it.
 No love toward others in that bosom sits
 That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.

-William Shakespeare

It's more about who takes the dog for a walk.
Or which one of us can leave work to get
a kid to the dentist, the doctor, talk
to the coach, the teacher, and don't forget
one of us has a meeting one of us
is travelling, running, writing, baking
there's no time for talk of makeless wives. Fuss
not. Certainly don't take offense. Taking
"makeless" and "unused" personally costs
time neither of us have. What luxury
to have time to spend hurting from a phrase lost.
True, the sting of things unused is legendary
it's poison takes no time at all to spread.
But our love towards our girls will never end.

- Callie R. Feyen