That Too Is Togetherness
I don’t blame her. Nor him.
But many years can these two
hot heads cast recriminations,
like bowls of warm sausage and spaghetti,
across the table? Breakfast,
and then dinner. There is no respite,
except when they are apart,
when the imposition of their professional
obligations keeps them separated.
He now sits. She walks back and forth
like a pacing tiger. Later
it is reversed. They are a crowd
in too small a room, a crackling
thermoelectric force
that the earth is unable to contain.
I look, and I wonder what it is that holds them together.
Children, competitive fervor, intellectual similarities?
What possible need can justify such madness?
But if I told them, if I suggested perhaps
a trial separation,
that would be the signal.
They would unite,
turn on me, as vicious as starving hyenas.
And I would be ripped to shreds in an instant.