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i.
Pay no attention to the individuals behind the curtain
The coupledom is real!
The love is blissful.
The charade, spectacular.

ii.
We know perpetual motion machines are not real.
And yet we often insist on this kind of love:
Dreams vivified by wills where passion is shaky
or dreams sustained by passions where will is absent.

iii.
We were so good at inhabiting that story
At the smiles, at the gestures
At none of it being false.
We were that good.

iv.
So skilled at powdering festering wounds
And lording our artistic practice over others.
So good at not noticing that we began to falter:
So capably failing one another.

v.
Soon enough, I was losing blood,
the heart having convinced the uterus
of a months-long flood.
You see, it did not want to cry alone.

vi.
So in August it began and we should not blame December
for doing her part to make us remember:
Some bleeding does not stop
Until we allow the ending to begin.