You finally roll over,
after downing the remainder
of the wine you said you’d share with me
and lay the bottle to rest
beside the bed, in a graveyard of clutter
I periodically nag you to tidy up

so now
I can finally assure myself
with more than tenuous trust
that you will not confirm
your gazing over my shoulder
at my laptop screen
with that irritating ******* chuckle
when you see whatever I’m
privately trying to enjoy for myself

because
now it would make more sense
that I’m doing anything
other than typing, typing
furiously about how I can’t articulate
why I’ve admitted you
into my bed. Why
we mutually burn through seasons
of wasted time on Netflix, and
instinctively, someone’s head
falls within the soft hollow
of another’s shoulder, yet I cringe
the moment you reach over
to make the embrace
intentional

and why
when the remnants
of the drunken, desperate stumbling
to my then celibate bed
that spawned
what we can’t seem to finish
have long dissipated, do we
insist on carrying our dead within us

and why
once you turn back and see me,
do you retreat to the living room
to strum hopelessly on the
Les Paul you spent too much money on
and had shipped to my apartment
because you barely spend any time at yours,
as I type this
groggy and reaching
for what’s as reachable as mist

with only a room
between us, separately
we decode the repercussions
of being haphazard nomads
somehow assigned
to civilization.