It beets like melancholy

Lips stained the color of cooked beets in the pan that hasn’t been washed since the time we completed a jigsaw puzzle, the last piece lost because you took it with you the week before, like it was a sick game played by two fools who do not know the rules nor care for the rotting onion in the foil from last month’s lasagna— the plate left on the table still has a hair from the way you move your hands through the strands when you explain your tricks, while my hands do not move the way yours do when you peel an orange or the way you reach for the mail, as if it would be pervasive not to long for those entwined fingers with neglect pouring in behind doors, as the digested beets lingers in the bowl until returning to clear water like the one I’d find next to my bed, half full just the way you leave it as if your life isn’t put together in pieces unlike the tensed hands I wake up unclenching in the morning to hold a cup of coffee that makes our kitchen smell like dirt detracting from the decaying fish in the trash— when I took the SUV north after I saw your post-it on the fridge that read the 2-for-1 special expired three weeks ago, the day our enlightened conversation over book club was frozen in place in the middle of the dining room table next to the layer of dust collected on the record player sleeves to be put away and lights to be turned off staring me in the face, like nothing has changed yet people argue and make up that’s how it is but my self-obsessed puzzle is still left unfinished because you took the last bit of remaining productively I had in place that could stop the toppling over in the kitchen sink.