My love, if I wrote your Tinder profile

by Hannah Grieco

Paul Johnston

45, but the body of a 25-year-old. Seriously, a perfect V and a six-pack. I work out when I can, less than I want, but I never stop moving, never stop metabolizing. I rest and recover while in motion. I work harder than anyone you’ll ever meet. I care very deeply about doing the right thing. My feelings get hurt pretty easily, often from things you won’t expect. I look like a tough bitch, but really I’m gentle, so kind, so interested in the good in this world. I make outrageously rude comments to my dogs while kissing them softly on the nose, squinching their ears in the perfect way to make them close their eyes and fall asleep against me. I’m very strong, but secretly want others to be stronger. Sometimes I’m frustrated when that actually happens, when it reflects back on me and I feel like a failure. I feel like a failure a lot. I have no idea how brilliant I actually am, how I fail at almost nothing, how I inspire the people around me, how the muscles in my arms bulge when I pick up my 10-year-old daughter and carry her to bed, tuck her in, and how nobody could resist squeezing them, leaning into me and being weirdly horny and grateful, even if the day was so long, the kids so fucking exhausting. Even if someone couldn’t imagine being aroused after a day like that, my kindness and my goodness and my ridiculously hot body for my age would mesh with my sarcastic sense of humor to immediately make any wife consider carnal activity. Even if she falls asleep before I finish reading Ramona Quimby, Age 8, to my younger daughter. Even if I walk in the bedroom and see her, snoring, half-dressed, the muted fire of a woman I married 15 years ago—even then, I’ll tuck her in, too. I’ll kiss her hand and place it against my cheek. I’ll be grateful to be married to her even though she’s such a dick and I deserve better, I deserve more, I deserve calmer, I deserve a moment’s peace. But I’ll never say that, just whisper, “I love you,” just turn out the lights and breathe in and out, slowing my heartbeat until I sleep.

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Hannah Grieco is a writer in Arlington, VA. Her work can be found in a wide variety of publications, both literary and freelance. She is the cnf editor at JMWW, the fiction editor at Porcupine Literary, and the founder and organizer of the monthly reading series ‘Readings on the Pike’ in the DC area. Find her online at www.hgrieco.com and on Twitter @writesloud.