The Way We Live

I ask you if you miss the bookshelves
we moved into the bedroom
after we bought the new couch,

which you are laying on now and reading.
You say no and turn back to the Ezra Pound bio.

I’m learning chess notation,
replaying a game from 1990
won by a 12 year and 5 month old chess master.
He’s good.
But the article says he made some stupid mistakes.
That is luck, I guess. I wonder what else he could have been
doing that night at 12 years and 5 months.

Waste is a funny word.

The noise through the wall has stopped.
The football game was boring.
The heater clangs and wakes a cat.
There are books on Paris on the wine stained coffee table.
There are empty beer cans.
There are full wine glasses.

This is how we live, for now.
I don’t know what next year will be like,
but this is the winter, we lived like this,

hovelled away, scraping out peace in slivers
under our nails. We are searching for something.
Something like a definition.
A book. A chess piece. A nap on the worn green couch. A language.
You turn down the classical station
because you hate Vivaldi.
I haven’t been to work in days, nursing a sore throat
made worse because I wouldn’t stop drinking.

This won’t last.
Things are either going to get much much better
or much much worse. You told me that in bar yesterday.
We are on the coin’s edge, wobbling before it falls.
But for now this is the way we live.

There is a harsh wind coming up from the estuary
It whistles past the window and I’m glad I’m here.
With my glasses off, you are just a blur on the couch.
I squint at the clock and wish it was earlier.
This night isn’t going to last
much like this way of living isn’t going to last.

Eventually it will change.
You will find something, or else, I will.

But goddamn,
just this once,
I wish it would.