“I loathe your laugh,” my lover said to me
and I should then have pushed him toward the door,
for love becomes impossibility
when it demands that you abrade your core.

Instead we argued, haggled, made a word
an effigy for all we didn’t share.
If only we had seen ourselves: absurd
and incompatible – an anti-pair.

But we were stuck – libido-warm and dense,
content enough to tough it out four years.
We studied, partied, and discussed intense
ideas until he broke and then with tears
we went our separate ways, but ever aft-
er understood: he hated how I laughed.