Coupled

There is a Sunday wistfulness to late summer sunlight,

the rising rustle of a breeze.

I don’t often see it.

I’m folded into my house early, after work.

Dulled by ceaseless disaffection,

I’ve become an instrument of routine, of resignation—

wrists bound by PC and cell phone,

constrained by family rant, familiar rage.

There is an order to this,

a symmetry to images of  outburst:

I ask you three questions for the day.

Your answers wither through the seasons.

Settled, in a cycle

I chase the cigars-and-martini circuit.

You change your music with the moon.

We know the risk, the rhythm of our relationship:

advantage as a pair,

unkindness as an art.