Maintenance

We hung our friendship

Like a painting, 

Trusted not to fall.

We spent years hammering the nails in,

slowly affixing every piece, every sharp edge— 

Doing routine maintenance.

The door was slammed for reasons I still rehearse.

The painting slipped,

not dramatically,

but enough to splinter the frame.

A few fragments broke loose.

Sometimes we hung it back up

But even then we could never get the picture to hold exactly right;

We pretended the wall didn’t remember the weight.

One day the slam echoed for the last time—

I didn't know it, though.

Sometimes I forget

Until my foot catches a stray shard.