Anger settles quietly
sifted like flour though
careful pleasantries,
kitchen-counter talk and hidden need.
We thought we were
compatible, or so
we were told,
and now we are too simple
to know the means to an end.
I miss what I can’t say
and you bite your tongue,
kissing my head like a judas,
releasing me to small mortality:
that finishing school for optimists.
And rage is a smirking sated beast
that I long to reduce to shadows.
