May 18, 2021

spreadsheet

The reckoning, we call it, gathering the scatter of receipts tucked between birthday cards 
and books of stamps and supermarket circulars, tallying the numbers and hoping 
the math is right, that there’ll be a semblance of balance in the end. 
But what column to put each escape to the water’s edge to gather our courage 
or come undone? What category to assign our tracks at the foot of the garden beds 
pulling at each weed, knowing it will only keep returning?
I cannot tell anymore between additions and subtractions, the calculator
growing blurry. The electric bill comes and we are glad for the surplus to pay it,
but so many days our abundance escapes us. All this air at the ready. All this love
we fling in a thousand directions, never once counting how much we have left.