I'm waking up in a forced embrace.
Only our arms entwined.
Every other part is segregated.
Our eyes don't meet,
our mouths don't share,
our hearts burn alone.
It has been so for a long time.

She's getting up with a deep exhale.
In an unraveling of our personal taijitu,
There is no longer room for possibility,
That I'm a part of her or she's the whole of me.

Yet she presses on,
past the polished bedroom mirror,
warm feet against the cold of shining bathroom tiles.
Closing the door with calculated precision.
Such that it is not too loud to be mistaken for discomfort.
Nor too quiet to suggest oppression.
Both of which are more than obvious for the both of us.

When I say more than obvious,
I do not mean it as a figure of speech,
but as an embodiment of inaction so deliberate,
it could only be executed with premeditated forethought.

As if every day had a singular purpose -
to live it so tediously,
that it would not be better or worse
than the last or the next.

Because in doing so we remove ourselves from the equation.
Which means we can't get angry at each other.
We can't love more, or less.
We can't blame, be thankful to, apologise or provide to one another.
And we can't regret.

In the immediacy of our privacy there is a trail, carefully constructed.
Plateaus of artificial sympathy,
like a line of lilies across a pond of immeasurable depth.
Every day we get up on one side of it and bounce across the steps like frogs.

Thank god frogs can't look down.
Because the deeper the water,
the clearer the reflection.