istant Figures

One lost you in the discarded ring

and halved locket: a sudden subtraction

to ruled margins where two became free.

 

Not in our prime, and at odds, we failed to find

solutions to a great divide. Neither

could agree where fifty-fifty’s line lay.

 

Instead, two figures hid behind columns

of attrition. Much ado about how

the silence of nil mouths failed to speak

 

muted messages. And how noughts and crosses

depended on kind: on those around,

on the relationship then affected

 

by the division of multiple misgivings

lined up in rows. In the fractions are

the far-flung places where two parted forth,

 

their shared wholeness left empty forever:

recounting, re-figuring, revising,

the minutiae of lost ledgers

 

- adding nothing.