Love Games

You’ve been depressed and complaining about shit for nine months straight,

and it only just occurred to me to remind you of our late 20s, how we spent

entire evenings relentlessly board-gaming, your competitiveness up against

my performative cheating, sliding my red pawn Home with a subtle pinky

when you looked down at your phone, dropping unearned pieces into my pie

when you left the couch to dig through the fridge to freshen mugs of beer, 

but now you grump all the time, you’re overwhelmed and sad, intolerant to noise,

your joy buried under a mantle of stress. Once, many years ago, your holy lamentations

sprang from too little time in the day to give life to the swell of song in your throat,

but now the dog has to shit, the dishes are never-ending, your work knows no bounds,

and there’s a patch of unsalted ice on the bottom step waiting for prey, but no salt.

Like everyone, we carry new hollows in our hearts, these past two years

the wreck of how we used to know things, how we did them.  

We tucked ourselves into a protective ball, and I re-emerged first. 

I’m waving to you. Please come out, help. Everything is still broken. 

Do you remember how I complained about that song you wrote for me

- how you’d love me just as much when I was old and no longer beautiful -

how I raged against how pathetic it was that you framed yourself as the Hero, 

saving me from inevitable erasure, how the patriarchal lie of fading charm

would never stop me from savoring the passage of time, from perennially-blooming,

from dancing in wild elation at the fucking improbability of our existence -

and here we are, a decade later, exhausted, pouring love into one concentrated place, 

our kaleidoscopically clever child who is kaleidoscopically challenging, the only person

I’ve met more prolific than you, with brighter eyes than you, whom I love more than you.

Come back, mischievous friend!  Write a song that will offend me, make me rage!

I can see you over there, glowering, dense as stone. Stop it. Come back, right now!

Will you break free from the stress to remember how long ago we collapsed in the grass

of a golf course, exhausted from all of the touching, sprinklers set to midnight timers

suddenly releasing jets of water, your face below mine contorting when your asshole

took a direct hit? You couldn’t run away - in our communion you’d lost your glasses - 

and from the safety of a summer maple I watched you high-step like a newborn fawn 

through the wet grass, blind, naked from the waist down, water dripping from your hair.

When you found them, you pushed them on your face, askew. Back in the grass we went. 

Honey, stop scowling!  Don’t make me buy you a shotgun and a rocking chair, 

a wool blanket for your lap. Don’t let this world rob you of song, your shades of blue. 

Instead, come close. Look around. Let me whisper some blasphemous thing in your ear,

wait, wait, are you laughing? I have one more thing to tell you, one more and one more.

Listen to my plan: I’ll procure a pointy stick to slay the raptor that daily rips your liver

and pecks it to shreds, I’ll pry open your arms and squeeze in, kick you from the cliff,  

plunge your head into icy water, douse your heart with kerosine and throw a match. 

I can see you peering, pretending your interest isn’t piqued - come play, you bastard!

When you’re not looking I’ll slip an extra piece into your pie, edge your blue

pawn Home with a subtle finger, blend color into your monochromatic sleep. 

I’m a profligate cheater and I’m helping you win, you won. Let us hold hands

and together be unrepentant, let us see what gold we can mine from our grief.

Let us see what greets us in the warmth we make from these long cold nights.