I'm happy for the jar of jam you gave me today.

The look in your eyes when the other thing fell was priceless. I thought I might cry, I bit my cheek so hard. I held it in my hand and you stared at it like it had appeared from nowhere.
I shouldn't have turned it over but I did, and you crumpled, ashen face and rubber legs.

The spider-web cracks obscured the most of it, but you saw that I saw and your face went into your trembling hands, silent.
I didn't remember any of it of course, until then. The tree by the lake, the little dangly thing that hung from the rear-view mirror...I think it was a tiny eight-ball.
What were you thinking? That we could get away? That it would always stay forgotten, day after day?

You glanced at the table in the other room then, as I knew you would. No, not the table but the floor underneath. The crack that was a little wider than the rest. I reached out for you to comfort you because I knew then that you were very tired. You had sacrificed so much of both of us and for what?
Your tears on my arms stung like tiny hateful ants. My anger slowly welled up and then receded, white-red flash of yesterday and tomorrow. You took the glass box when I offered it, pure sorrow weeping through you. Grainy knowing chewed at me, treacherous shed tears of yours.

From the front hall the metronome of our destiny, clanging intuition. They've come again. The damned box, broken now, always my betrayer.
I am wrapped up while you silently weep out the window, your beautiful unsteady hands grasp the sill, white. They lead me past the doorway and I see the glow through the crack under the table.

My head drops with the fresh remembrance. I will see this again.