A personal profanity

These walls talk back, you know.

Hook-eyed to everything pulled from your throat:

The plumbing I mean.

This is muscle memory. 

This is the line we wait in.

Akin to every fraction of small-talk 

Like this is a fractal expanding out the door.

You, globetrotter through every cataclysmic episode 

And still I find myself right back to you.

You, lingering of unflushed bowls and Mary Jane 

Paper towels towered and layered across tiles

Like a cape

Like this, too, is a type of ceremony.

And you, quiet and forgiving.

But oh jettison of hand soap and light switch 

The picture of such in the urinal 

To confess or be confessed

And still cleave through accountability like a missed call.

There is no 

There. I fixed it.

You hold too much of us to be tricked into a poem

Or a devious lick 

Or a promise going forward — 

Money meant for this not that

Ebb and flow of the influx through you

What leaves and comes back

Because I gotta jet on out of here

So I left you with what I gathered in my hands:

An offering 

On the floor.