At home, a sixteen-year-old son and window treatments and walls to paint and “How was your day?” On the web there are no days and no seasons and no oil changes for the Subaru. “No one important.” At the motel, flat pillows, a lamp tall as his son in the corner and a print of a sailboat. “In year three, the sex fizzled and we broke up. Then we got married.” Have you gotten yourself into something? “Tonight I am making your favorite dish.” News comes on, news goes off, taxes. “At some point, he stopped kissing me on the neck.” She needs to write her Goals Statement. “He promised.” More or less. “How can I live like this?” the three of them in unison.
Copyright © 2013 by Jillian Weise. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on November 15, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.