We sprayed the room with our anger

realizing  it is one of the few possessions

that we share.

I bring a spoonful of secrets to your lips

but they blistered your tongue.

Slouching like the damp feather pillow

 that carries my shape,

I lose my footing on the crumbling remains of our battle.

Emboldened by imaginary treacheries,

 you wield your sword of stoicism like a blunt object.

I sway with vertigo;  you stand erect on familiar solid ground.

Refusing to be choked by your gag order

I leave elaborate clues.

Poems scribbled on tissue

tied with the beribboned lacings of a ballerina’s slipper:

every word pulled taut.

Truth masquerading as tourniquets.

Dismissing them as overwrought sentiments

from behind the safety of enemy lines,

you fashion ingots from the  loose coinage of a mind’s sounding bored.

Searching for the fiction you rely upon,

your foil rents the chiffon of my psyche

I am as perishable as a day lily

in a milk-glass vase.

Exposed by a string of pollen leavings.

your face, when I touch you,

is marked yellow with regret’s hollow tracings.

We soldier on.

You extracting your tithes of tenderness

While I shiver in the silence.