He said she was miserable. In the
moment, seeing the soft parts of him,
in all his hairy-chested smooth-talking
savior-mode glory, in the midst of our
hot affair, I paused, What a delusional
woman his first wife had been,
the houseboat, rugged up with plastic
vacationing gear and her stuck
in the galley, while they motored
around 1,229 feet above sea level,
fishing off the dreamy edges of the sun
deck and, her laying out tables, cleaning
up. Why didn’t she ask for help, quit
cooking for everyone and his brother,
jump off the promenade into 247 square
miles of royal blue water. She had a
feminist choice, I insisted. Deep, young
and messy, I was adamant. Why didn’t she
make her kids pitch in, taking turns
washing dishes, flipping pancakes.
Having a taco night, I said, or frozen
Swanson’s. What a feeble woman she
was, relegating herself to something
she hated, all without crystal-clear
advocation for herself. I think of this
story nearly every day, about the lake’s
formed bodies, the narrows, a virgin river 
with its previously submerged white
surfaces, and Hoover Dam’s thick cement
wall, holding back 28.23 million acre-feet
of water
where the river meets the lake and settles in.