Found Wanting

And so she concluded

that he must have looked at her,

at them,

he must have taken stock and

added up the pros and cons and

made up some rules that

she didn’t know they were

playing by

and he calculated the score

and he maybe made some columns and

put hash marks,

four in a row, then crossing the

four out with the fifth

and when he added up the hash marks and

the pros and the cons and the tangibles and the intangibles

and the things he wanted and the things she had and

who he was alone and who they were together,

when he did all that,

and leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling,

hands folded together across his stomach

and the truth of the whole thing descended,

it must have been to his great surprise,

at least she hoped to his great surprise,

that she was

found wanting.

That what she had was not enough,

or perhaps was too much;

that who they were meant that he couldn’t be

who he thought he was, or should get to be;

and that in the end it was just about the numbers,

about the math,

not about her and him and them at all.

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