Ants Marching

Ants Marching

Pretending I do not expect to sustain this loneliness

Like a fractured ankle to my pace and stride bending and grinding bone on bone

Realizing the alternative will end up in the stare down

With retribution like loaded ammunition fired off in household maintenance

Must do’s and rationalizations stored under stair board compartments

Pressed down and glued with instructions

Mapped out on pressed down no popcorn ceilings

Perfectly molded tinted and primed the colors clearly in line

Red next to white not overlapped predictable metrics

Stacks of cook books and measures, recipes written

Cat food set out cans waiting to be dispensed

Every morning in a murmured routine of all the flavors that will ever be

Coagulated tuna and salmon on tin, preserved tastes

Buried within the incorrect answer given and accepted without question

Or worry that all of this was granted in too big a hurry to

Follow up queries lingering on door steps knocking and abandoned

No more listening for the salesmen trying to remind us

About true love and fantasies about unicorns and legends of champions

Of fantastic times and gilded lives, played out and prancing

With questions we should have been answering

Compacted into perfect conclusions despite these blinded illusions

Ants marching right into the grease fire, burning alive with the smell in the feelers

Tapping the Earth for a different path, the tread heating up six legs and two lives

With one heart and tender lies