What is your damage?, he said,
but the way he spat it out told me
that he didn’t really want to know —
not there in the Grand Rapids airport
(do I remember right that it was named
for Gerald Ford?) while we ate hot dogs
and waited for our flight home. Home.
Now, there’s a word for you. What a joke.
Maybe my damage was all the time spent
assuaging him, his ego, assuring him
that he was smarter than me, that I was
lucky to be with him, even when he was
surly as any god who is distant more so
than loving. But I didn’t answer that day.
I never did answer, really — I just left
when he told me to leave. I even left
our cats to fend for themselves with him.
But that day, like I said, I didn’t say
much of anything until we got on the
plane and we both made small talk
with the other person in our row. He
was good at that. You’d never know
we were fighting, every day a little
more damage, and that a moment before
we got on the plane, I’d flicked
a piece of onion off the table,
wadded up my napkin, and cried.