When I Take a Wife - a poem 2019
When I Take a Wife
By: Kimmy Higginbotham
The wife that I'll take will be magic and cunning
And known for much more than the fact that she's stunning.
Clever and Tricksy with a laugh that is rich
An old soul inside of a modern day Witch.
Her eyes will shine with a passionate fire
and her heart will be filled with artistic desires.
Brave and courageous and smart as a whip
Just the hint of a smirk at the curve of her lip.
Her word is her bond when she makes promises
And her boundaries will be just as strong as she is.
She'll love herself fiercely and be fiercely kind
Honest and open and a tad unrefined.
A powerful presence and sly charming wit
She'll dance naked at midnight with bonfires lit.
She'll be everything I've always wanted to be
And I hope that she'll think half as highly of me.
I wrote this poem because I had been assigned to find a poem for a class and nothing I found encapsulated the essence I wanted to bring. I wanted a poem about a clever woman, a trickster, I wanted a list of all the lovable things about a woman that didn't have to do with how "beautiful" she was. All I could find were long love poems about stunning, gorgeous, beautiful, physical attributes, and nothing about who the woman was. So, without infinite hours to spend scouring every inch of the internet or local library, I finally sat down and wrote down what I was looking for. Fun fact, the idea for this poem was initially inspired by my desire to portray a young Baba Yaga - who she might have been before she became the half-villain of legend, how her lovers might have described her in her youth. And perhaps she was physically beautiful, but I really just loved the idea that her physical beauty would be the least interesting thing about her, not because she was ugly, but because she was incredible. Admittedly, this poem was also formed out of how I wish someone would see me, how I wish I saw myself. This poem turned out to be a description of who I think I would like to be, hence the last 2 lines. On a final note, as a bisexual woman, I feel very strongly that this is exactly the type of woman I would want to marry, were I to take a wife.