Unintended, random like dice, or love

the stories fell into place, puzzle parts

as remembered, and retold as punch lines

to a deflected tragedy one night

late after almost all had departed.

You spoke into your anguish. I listened,

troubled in my failed attempt at reason,

for what you had said tore into my heart.

How can anyone know the genetic

strands of what we have said to each other?

where the safe world we have constructed shapes

us from the lies we have neatly explained

until the only truth we know is ours,

tangled in our hearts’ cold reliquaries.

(November 21, 2021)