was not first rate.
We didn’t wake each day
and thank God for bringing us together
or embrace passionately at the airport
before a long goodbye.

I know you were unenthused about my drinking
and felt awkward rubbing my back when I cried.

But there were days when I could hear you humming the jingle
I’d been singing all week—

and midnights when I’d find my indifferent foot tapping
to your made-up beat.

When we sit down to dinner you are a stranger
from another century. You describe your method
for harvesting wheat—
                                             reaping,
                                                               threshing,
                                                                                    winnowing,

and I wax poetic about the worthless chaff left behind.

Surely,

there’s an expiration date on this.
We can’t go on this way—                    two parts of a Janus particle
bound to each other in this mutually destructive way.
One day you’ll start crafting schematics for your combine

and I will find a way to make use of the otherwise
useless.