I Hate and I Love

Lovers separate when a catastrophe occurs:
the ground beneath their feet splitting into
two, right down the middle, falling between the
cracks, unable to hold on. A frustrating
event that renders the rest of the

contract unperformable. I suppose there’s
nothing else left to say when the
damage cuts so deeply that
a part of me dies whenever I talk to him.
I cry when he hands me back the change.

Ad finem ultimum. What happens when
that has been exhausted too? An implicit
gratuitous promise, its existence overlooked,
when two people get together for an
indefinite period of time. Shocking

oversight. They failed to read the
fine print before signing on the dotted line:
without certainty of term, you don’t
have a lease, just an inchoate equity
when one has relied on the other’s representation

to her detriment and suffered a loss. The way I’m bound to
you, hands tied behind my back, limboing between
the dark abyss below and the bright
freedom above. I can’t switch you off, can’t
sever the taut threads of feelings that

continually stitch my skin into yours.
I have missed the sunrise, I have fallen through the
cracks, I don’t text him when I get home.
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask?
I do not know, but I feel it it happening, and I am tormented.

– Catallus 85