Forbearance
We’ve stopped talking again
so the earth has no color.
Everywhere the chlorophyll has paused,
light burning over the day’s lessons
as hunger burns
the mouth I can’t make eat.
A little rice? A little soup?
I’d rather die
reading the early texts
you sent about my breasts.
I wouldn’t take a picture—
infidelity!—
and so instead had conjured them
with words,
for which, with words,
you gave me back a tongue
we dragged across the skin
of common thought.
Such is our lot,
our shared disease or gift.