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.