Pretenses

Her letter lay on the table, unopened still, for the third day in a row—
I can always pretend it took a few days longer in the mail.

Peace,
another word to ruminate over,
chew on it like cud, and regurgitate.
No, I won’t tell you what it is;
one of those things you know only when you lose,
like life, like happiness,
like your keys.

We were walking 'round the neighborhood when the weather started to shiver,
looking inside houses, cloaked in the night—
if people knew how much their chandeliers told about them, they’d lose them.
I was savoring the cold like I do my sadness—
silently, with nostrils open, and a smirk on the inside of my mouth.
I was pretending, when we buy a house, I can invite my family over some time.
But the thought got stuck, there, on a wooden bench near the back entrance,
damp with the evening’s breath, fibers gaping, ready for the frost.

Peace.
Should the peaceful even be allowed to talk about it?
If we could only will it, we wouldn’t be here.
Yes, let’s pretend.

Pretense,
that’s how people wait for peace, pretending that it was there.
And in the meantime, there are fridges to be cleaned.

We celebrated our seventh anniversary in front of the TV—no sex, just apple pie.
Our faces were beaming in the glow of having said it all,
or just enough—the rest is too boring anyhow.
These days I can pretend to devour him—he doesn’t even need to know.

Peace.
It’s like nothing, the anticipation of pain—
is good the absence of evil?
Abundance, time, they cost.
One of those things you forget about.

(Originally posted on October 20, 2006)