How We Got Here

There is a second truth, a last word:

We would never have married.

When we should sleep

we speak in tatters, in protest, in stammers.

I recognize the cleverness of your piety,

a preference for dissection over disclosure.

As I abandon mission habits and history

I dread the weighing of my worth,

the complacence of your calculation.

It may not matter I have done

nothing I know is wrong.

There is a rage

in consent and control, in questions

men and women ask and never answer.

Cruelly as I can

I try to remember if it was Marseilles, midwinter

or the Myanmar station when I loved you.