I’m 20 something,
It’s april something,
and something
is coming up about this
a sour note, an abrupt ending, a last rung --
we move against all of it like a tide.
Iit’s over, babe.
and the whole world knows but us.

So we kiss and we keep busy
we go to therapy and try date night,
we read the books people read when they can no longer hear the music
we journal, we vacation, we cry on the floor.
you vomit in the bathroom, I clean the bathroom,
we move into a new apartment,
we decorate, we fantasize, we drift
through the new grocery store
looking for the person we fell in love with
in the old grocery store.

You drink too much, I go to early yoga
You work late, I get strict about my bedtime
we are drawing lines in sand we can no longer see
We open the windows, we run out of windows
we promise to change, we don’t.
We promise we love each other, we don’t
act that way

We keep decorating. We go back to Ikea.
I see your phone
and we don’t really bounce back from that
because every time I look at you,
I see his teeth, I hear his name
I hate that he has a name
a job, a desk
I wonder how awful must the baby be
before I can throw her out with the bath
How cold must the water become before I
Step out of the tub entirely
We redecorate, we move furniture
Trying to fit our outlines against the closing walls
We sit at the tiny table,
I think you reach your hand across the solid grain
But it’s not your hand, it’s a letter you wrote him,
or maybe it’s his hand
Closing a circuit around your waist like a corroded battery
and with that image, in that instant,
love undecorates the whole house like a bad dog
Posters slide from the wall, the couch unravels like a crime scene,
The candle wax climbs up the wick, burns and then disappears entirely
and with it the promise of our sacred autumn, our shared holiday,
our steeple brushed with snow,
That streetlight on Maspeth Avenue
that once called our skeletons to safe supper that first winter.
Supper disappears
as we puzzle our bodies apart in the half light
someone uncooks rice,
butter hardens over now dry kernels in the still metal kitchen
you sketch white over a mountain pass in your notebook
I step out of bed
into what’s left of the mountains.
The page goes white behind me.