fine print

I'd decided to take
the back way home
from work
since it was three-thirty
and school was getting out.
The winding road
passed through a valley
where vinyl-sided
split-level houses
cluttered the fields
that were once grazing pastures.
It seemed some sort of crime
against whatever god you choose.

The image presented to me
by the route was surreal:
All of the driveways
were the same shade of midnight.
All of the mailboxes matched.
Most strikingly of all, however
was that where each driveway
met the road stood an anxious
disillusioned mother waiting for
the bus that'd bring her husband's children
back home to pick at another
unappreciated meal, to dream another night
in a bed that was taken for granted.
They stood like rigid sentries
their eyes unflinching as they stared
through my windshield, through my entire
truck. I could see where their beauty once
was before the soccer practice schedules
and "late nights at the office" took their tolls.
The men whom they married may or may not
still have loved them, regardless of
whether or not their secretaries went
that extra mile. Maybe those women
were waiting for their husbands
at the ends of those driveways as well?
Was part of them praying that he
finally would confront the truth
and not bother to come home?
A bold assessment of the situation, you may say
but if you'd been there with me
to see the fire fading in their eyes
the notion wouldn't seem so far-fetched.

I sped through that gauntlet
and told myself none of that would ever become
the fate of my beloved.
Some promises, though no less important, are easier
to keep.