Wow. Let me just say. This poem has SUCH a twist. He really had me going there; I thought his wife was missing and that she had been cheating on him. There I was feeling like the world had fallen straight into darkness and immorality. I was sad for this guy! I even wondered in the space between line 6 and 7 what he would do; would he divorce her? Would he refuse to give up and try to fix things? NOPE! Because she is only on Pinterest.
I love how the poem is set up as this "crime against humanity" when in truth, Griffin's wife is only addicted to an (awesome!) online forum. Now that I am calmer about the whole situation, I can see how annoyed he could be. Pinterest is so cool and filled with such great ideas for literally everything that it is so easy to spend countless of hours browsing that website. I already have multiple boards on that website that include decor ideas for my wedding, instructions on how to set up Bookshelf beds and Doctor Who edible arrangements.
If we try to dissect how Griffin set up his poem, it is probably worth mentioning that his word choice at the beginning of the poem is drastically far away from what we might associate with an addiction to a website. The fact that he specifically said she was "gone for many days" indicates that he WANTED us to believe she had done something drastically wrong. When someone says his wife is "gone", it usually means she is either dead or she has left him. Constantly surfing a website does not mean this person is "gone", but at the same time, he means that she is "gone" in the sense that her brain and attention is somewhere else, not with him. She might be physically near him, but her mind is surely elsewhere.
Likewise, "I've tried sending her messages" immediately made sense to me as Griffin trying to call his wife or text her, asking her where she is and when she was coming home. It never occurred to me that she was in his face, but he couldn't reach her on a conscious level because she was too entranced by Pinterest. The "messages" he was sending her probably were not using his phone but rather by voice--yelling-- or by some other means of signaling her back to reality.
When Griffin mentions that "she's lost/ with her new found interest", I was so sure she was cheating on him. At that point, I was so disappointed in her and sad for him (which says a lot about this poem because it got me to feel that way). My mind was on his side for some reason, perhaps because he was the one writing this poem, which tells us that he cares enough about the situation to write about it. She could be lost in her interest because the way Pinterest works is that you look up your interest,and then there are a million different pictures, crafts and more to look though. If she was really being obsessive, she could get easily lost in whatever her interest is.
"Curse her friend" had me thinking he wanted to punch the other man, but here I thought it was very weird that he called the other man "her friend". If this has truly been a cheating incident, I would have expected Griffin to have called the other man a worse name to say the least, maybe even a curse word. This would be the first indication that this is not a case of unfaithfulness. On the other hand though, if Griffin was trying to keep the poem PG and use code word; "friend" could surely be a stand-in for a much worse concept.
Finally we get to the end of the poem, "curse her friend/ who invited her to/ Pinterest". Shocked would probably be the least of my reactions. It was very cool to have everything you perceived flipped on its head and turn out the complete opposite. Griffin's wife is not cheating on him; she is simply online a lot and it is ALMOST like she has left him. It is not the same situation but at the same time, I can see the similarities.
She is "gone" all the time, she does not respond to his "messages", and she's "lost" in her "interest" on Pinterest. I guess it makes sense...
Tough luck, Griffin, you're going to need it trying to get your wife away from Pinterest. My recommendation:
Also, find your own interest on Pinterest while you're doing that.
