SLICES

 

SLICES

No blade ever slices
a perfect fifty-fifty,
and we, my love, are no shining exception—
our halves jagged, uneven, pulling apart
like frayed threads in a worn-out seam. I sit alone, watching old Oprah reruns
that echo your distant silhouette,
while you hunch over your glowing screen,
tapping keys into the dead of night,
eighty hours bleeding into endless weeks,
your ambition a wall I can't climb. We share a bed, tangled in sheets and germs,
our bodies brushing in accidental space—
but no kisses linger, no spark of Eros
ignites the air between us,
just the cold echo of what we once chased. Held at the gunpoint of your quiet guilt,
I'm exhausted from extending my hand,
from baring my soul in vulnerable pleas,
only to grasp at lottery odds
for a sliver of your fleeting affection. I tell you plainly what I refuse to become:
a forgotten chore, like the lawn out back,
overgrown with weeds, unmowed and wild,
neglected under the indifferent sun,
waiting for a touch that never comes.