Was the razor-tongue that you
cut me with this morning

The same one that formed puffy-clouded
words of love, just yesterday?

Were the half-words you said this morning,
words you just hadn't said yet,

And if you didn't say them to me, today,
would they have died inside you?

But, giving them air by opening your mouth
you were able to keep them alive,

And and let them kill me?

Could I have lived at another time and
not have heard them at all,

Or were they natural birth-children of the soft
mother-words I heard yesterday?

Could something have caused them to be sent
my way, or better still, not at all?

Was it destined that I hear them, no matter,
and for you to say them?

Were they, perhaps, directed at someone else
and I just got in the way?

Maybe, I'm thinking, it's just some kind of crazy
game, where the rules are: you win,

At all cost?

Then, if those are the rules, I quit;
at least until tomorrow.

04/14/2005