Photo by Gerome Viavant on Unsplash | public domain

Argument Number 365

Brooding silence keeps me awake:
your back, an insuperable wall.
Words hang in air beyond reach.
You question my defensiveness,
and I ask why you take offense.
Fighting falls: familiar forms.
You say, I say. We’re afraid.
Those our age cleave then leave.
At times you think I don’t care
(and you overcompensate).

Birds build nests in our back yard
leaving you distracted, vague.
I laugh at squirrels and mating games:
we at the other and ourselves.
I can’t shake you off, it seems.
Perhaps you feel the same toward me.
Men my age have affairs.
How tiresome. I suspect that I’m
too much a sloth for such. The truth?
You are the only one I want.

To support the poet’s benign coffee addiction: Coffee.