In the beginning there was inertia,
and inertia led, as you might expect,
to nothing, so what had been
somethingness became nothingness:
Take-out meals when he had the energy to go out and take;
TV when he staggered home from work until he descended to sleep,
bathed in the blue-gray glow of a test pattern burning into his brain;
the Herculean task of waking up, the snooze button worn like a worrying stone.
And then a corner was turned, radically, a true 180 bend arounder.
It was love and love alone at last that found him.
One different, like a musical, from any loves before.
This time there was commitment.
This time the idea of marriage arose.
And then something strange happened.
Her Ex slouched back into town, one she loved like an old rocking chair.
And she went back to rocking in it, finally breaking the news to him.
The messiest kind of news, it was a Midwest tornado obliterating a trailer park.
And though he’d only seen it in the movies or read about it in books, they formed a triangle.
And this triangle, like the ones they beat hell out of in Westerns to announce mess, could not be broken.
So before inertia moved back in, he moved out, and left the two a line alone.
Lanning Lee 