To Commemorate Good Faith

Every married year without knowing it I had trusted the systems' hands

To process me without cost

Dual incomes side by each others' benefits

Received by a world built for two

Like the frictionless passage of an inserted chip

Stepping out of the current for hands too small to ask

Then the backstop gone with the leaving

Poured the remainder into a partnership

Full collapse when their own small hands pushed them out of the stream

And still I had chosen this

Six jobs with unclaimed legibility

One accident from the edge like the lot of us

Who asked the therapist no idea of my paperwork

Weeping in the dentist's chair with outdated records

Cancelled insurance on the way home to hold another's hands

Shallow breaths at the surface

Exhaling not knowing what left