1. your name crawls arrogantly over both itself
& half-finished stacks of half-assed art amassing
in the narrow hallways of your father’s home.
2. your prized rustbucket Odyssey is older than me
& has enough miles to reach venus. during a drive to Amsterdam you reveal
you invented The Shins before New Slang was even popular.
3. my mother, a chemist, says we don’t
have any.
4. i ask what scares you most about turning thirty & you tell me it’s being ensnared
in the iron grips of American suburbia.
5. after an argument, you mention physical attraction “stopped
mattering” to you—appropriately, i am the first victim
of your latest charity.
6. no amount of new-age compatibility quizzes can counteract
the unavoidable, especially when your ‘love language’ is explaining
my own poetry to me.
7. you suggest “it doesn’t have to be like this” but i can’t forget
your beloved artisan panini place & that steel-eyed smirk you flashed
when you told me i’ll never understand you.
8. playing the didgeridoo in your basement doesn’t make you “Indigenous chic,”
just like patronizing the Ethiopian waitress doesn’t make you any kind of “woke.”
9. those fucking antique spectacles.