Linda McCauley Freeman, The Marriage Manual

How We Lived

We lived in the absence of heat.

It wasn’t always so.

There was a time when his morning coffee,

steaming at our bedside, grew cold.

We lived bound by what was,

as if the right and left shoe

still held the correct foot,

ignored the unbearable pinch.

We lived in the passage of time,

years splayed like a spreadsheet on the wall.

Our chart of existence aged unchecked—

what we wanted, thought would be.

We lived in the knot of discontent.

Standing together in the empty

kitchen, we listened to the hum

of the refrigerator, sliced cherries

with sharp knives into pieces so small

only pits and red remained.

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