I got used to

opening books and reading the last page

reading lips in the dark

sharing a bed with nightmares

I got used to

your outline, emptied of care

squeezed dry these years

dessicated by slow fruiting rage

we lay as blue eggs will

in a basket of woven thorns

clucking over regrets, like weary card players at dawn

you gave me a cocktail of poison

I the dreary tread of error

it took a life time and a match

struck against willing rock

to burn the illusion

and gather ourselves whole

Even as spilt ways form streams

Cleaving together seemed

The natural passage of people with holes in their chest

Tasting the arrow as it exits

…

Where then? The other part of me

Located in your similarity

A death not proffered but needed

I, a bag put down, not retrieved

They mocked when she wept

Pointed at her words and said;

Her humiliation and dramatic way

Is overblown and immature

You nodded in agreement

Because she was no longer part of your wield

A flung thing to be lost and spoiled

Once you would have defended with your life

Told them; It is you / with your cruel minds / who should be ashamed

That was when we walked as one print

Beneath patterned trees still living, holding to

A belief some knots cannot come undone

it wasn’t true … our knot I saw dissolve

As you baptized change with solvent certainty

Moved toward it and away from me

Did I ever say … without you I

Thin-rooted and growing side-ways

Slowly fail?

I did?

Ah. Then.

I must have missed

Your response.