lacuna one

we are gamblers, you & i, & accustomed to winning. but the house will
have its cut in time: thus we find ourselves, handsclasped, in the home

we helped imagine, uttering the banal. losing by degrees all we had
worked so diligently to steal. a code, a call sign, an appointed hour.

easy sidle. recognizing time we could not afford to lose, & so threw
away, gestures of survival. we are not defiant people—takers of small

gains, thieves of trifles, of what the other had always to spare.
winnings from a game played against long odds. you were my loaded dice.

i your stacked deck & the teeth whereby we carved an hour from the day's
dying flank, a bloodwarm evening to kill at playing strangers. how

difficult it is to hand back the chips, to restore that which was only
borrowed. to forgive inevitability, to remember & relinquish at once.