Flossing
By Ben Berman
I
always go back and forth
on whether to slide away
when my routines turn rote
or string myself along
and embrace what roots me.
And it’s when I act
most wholesome, doing all
the little things right,
that I feel the pull
of what could be elsewhere,
the dangerous brush with love
hiding in the crevices
of my future. But sitting here
now, as they drill away
at what has decayed
and provide instead
a local numbness,
a temporary, partial loss
of pain, I almost wish
I had spent more time
attentive to the private
maintenance of us,
the daily rituals
of loosening what hides
and hollows,
the ten minutes here and there
that could have prevented
or at least delayed
our threadbare unraveling.