That boy and I will never clean glass
in the master bath, fully clothed, the dirt
of potted plants floating
at my callused feet. We’ll never commiserate
at soap-scum’s accumulation
on the outside of the doors. Lime for scurvy,
lime in milk, he galvanized
the follicles of my abdomen, we ate
Galapagos turtles, soup spooned
from the shells
of their boiled bodies. We ignored
extinction.
This weekend, the toilet is leaking, source
unknown. That boy
has never returned from the hardware store
with a liquid whose enzymes delight me.