Did I deserve what I received? As much 

as baby deserves her bottle (or is 

admission an absolution?): Surely;

but did I deserve to deserve it? Well,

choice being the merely proportionate 

illusion of choice; maybe. In practice 

you’ve already won or lost; in practice 

you’re nothing but a voice in your own ear

with all the volition of a raindrop: 

Atoms, set in motion, set in motion

atoms; retraceable, predictable

surely someday soon, or surely never,

by supercomputers so prescient as

to meet most definitions of a god.

A scolding faith; a discourse between hands,

in a precarious house assembled 

from cushions and blankets, about holding:

Gold rings, unchaperoned, set faithfully 

in a clay dish intended for hand soap,

itself set precariously within 

the bathroom sink drain’s vertiginous draw,

gleam in absent context, a clinging to 

abstraction: loose if not yet lost, released

before release; in the face of fingers

that scrabble hypothetically after 

their precious metaphor, or metaphors,

a slippery ring is holding out hope 

for static grace in a dish for hand soap.

Vacant nights without compression of sleep,

crutch of irony, touchstone of motif,

climax in one’s own circular brainwash

undermining postdated peace of mind. 

Torrential spare time, wasted debating

the usefulness of unsparing debate,

sums with the cadence of vacillation:

stay with me stay with me leave me alone;

courteously allow that I must sleep

uncuddled by one who’s having trouble

uncuddling, who when I go take a leak

alerts the presumptive neighbors, shouting,

   “In your scant absence, I am loving you;

   love wakes!” through the cold plaster of my pique.