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)
