Staple

You bring it up, out of nowhere, while we are

Gardening, telling me about a stapler at work,

Industrial sized and across the hallway from you.

How every time it goes off, every time you hear it,

You think it is a sidearm, being cocked and aimed,

And ready to fire.  Every time, you say to me, now,

A metal rake in your hands, tearing up this earth,

We have here, saying, every single time I hear it.

And just when I think I know everything, everything

That happened to you over there, you tell me this,

A stapler, and what is happening, still happening here.

And I think about it, that stapler and you, as I lay awake

In our bed, about things being stapled together, like

Two stretches of skin, stretches of skin like deserts,

Stretching over exposed skull, together to meet, and

Us, our relationship, war torn, and in pieces, now

And how we are just trying to put it back together,

Or the earth down below this window, torn like that,

Open and raw, just waiting for sod, for sod we ordered

That will be delivered tomorrow, those perfect squares

Of already green grass, which we will place there,

Like skin grafts, as if, as if nothing ever happened.