actual practices

in confidence he told us that
it was acceptable to eliminate
the origins of fate while
moving at termination speed
to avoid coming together

as long as we stayed within the
generally accepted boundaries
established by the architects
of misunderstanding

we struggled to lay down a
framework of self-interest
benefiting our desires to
avoid real relationships

but a strong sense of longing
buried deep under decades of
contact termination made it
impossible to make peace
with the necessary omissions