I tried to sew us together
with pillow talk and Tuesday date nights –
a twine, twisting around our half-empty hearts
like a snake strangling its prey.
It began with a sidelong glance,
a quick white lie settling on the edge of my tongue,
and you, wrapped in the enigmatic smile
she wore that day in the office.

You tried to glue us together
with our ancient conversations –
adhering us weakly to promises
we’d long ago broken and never admitted to.
It was obvious in the repeated arguments
about your ugly comforter,
how much I hated the distance
driven between us by our diverging futures.

Together we chipped away
at the concrete foundation laid years ago
when I confessed that I loved you
on that hot, windy night in Aruba.
It sometimes resurfaces
when I mention tomorrow,
the look of terror you didn’t think I saw then,
but you sometimes still wear.

And I know that the days we live
are drifting us farther apart –
wedging themselves in the cracks
we’ve made with each biting word.
It tightens, the fraying tether that binds us,
as we stretch further and further,
and although we know it will someday break,
we hold on to each other for now.