NaPoeWriMo, Day 2

Stepford Had His Reasons

"What a pleasant surprise!" she said
and turned around with that mountain of brownies
perched between her carefully-placed oven mitts.
Not one hair out of place, her lipstick just thick enough,
her dress and pearls perfectly groomed.
As a teenager, he would roll his eyes at her.
She was just baking, she would say, and wasn't it such a happy coincidence
that they happened by at that moment?
He was on to her. Who did she think she was?
Her baking sucked, and Donna Reed didn't have
holes in her dresses and run-down heels.
But when he grew up, and followed his passion
for artificial intelligence and life-like robots,
the image of her kept coming back to him,
always with the brownies, and the pearls,
and even those run-down, scuffed beige shoes.
So can you blame him for abducting the woman
who buys Kentucky Fried Chicken for her children
instead of cooking the real thing? Or the mother
who would let her children play
in the convenience store parking lot on Friday nights
instead of hosting a family game night?
He reshapes them, one and all, into that
perfectly imperfect image of a woman
who may not have gotten the details right
but cared enough to even attempt to deceive him nonetheless.