My first reading of this poem went well. But subsequent readings have got me feeling like Orson Welles in the funhouse scene from The Lady From Shanghai.
The title brings to my mind many associations, moods, and feelings. But practically all are missing from this poem or not developed sufficiently -- tantamount to the same thing.
Next is the "You" in line one. Is this the speaker, the husband, the reader, all of these or none? I don't know. I can find no logic, poetic or otherwise, for my not knowing.
Moving on ...
"Flash forward" -- does this refer to the non-linear narrative device? I thought it should, given the poem's title and the enumeration of story elements. But the happy-ending story elements in the sestet seem to follow in a linear way from those that precede them. The film title card seems to read "Twenty years later" (linear) instead of "Twenty years from now" (flash forward).
The ending falls flatter and flatter with each new reading. I don't know why.
My goodness, another mystery... does the speaker even know the man? Well, she knows he's got a wife. But what else is going on, if anything? I've been assuming there was an adulterous relationship here! But that doesn't have to be the case. Maybe the couplet doesn't really emerge organically from what precedes it. I don't know. Now I'm beginning to suspect there's no development in this poem. Hm.
It might be nice if the speaker had a sudden self-realization: in "real life" she's the blond tart and he's the old fart. I don't know.
. . .
I'll wager it's the title that's throwing me off -- wrong genre. There's more sentimentality than cynicism here. Romantic Comedy? Maybe a "screwball comedy" -- given zany diction like "war or bad karma upped their applecart" (v. 4)?
But I don't know.
It did work for me on the first reading. Or did it?
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