difference of parts

Dan came over last week
and admitted he couldn’t remember
the simple mathematical procedure of division.
While Nate ridiculed him,
I realized that some specifics
were fuzzy in my mind too.

Fuzzy like last night,
when you wanted me to clean
and I just wanted to relax.
This simple procedure —
picking things up and
putting them someplace else —
was a headache, a fuzzy hole
in my happiness.

And the whole night we were divided.

You slept without touching me.
I woke to your absence.
“What?” you said.
I left for work.

It’s the part about remainders I don’t remember.
When you’ve got the numbers stacking downward,
I know there’s some subtraction involved…

And what is a remainder anyway?
Just some arbitrary number left over,
left out of the real answer.

And in the car, I imagined all the things I left out,
unsaid apologies and explanations.

Now I figure,
as long as the numbers come out even
we’ll be fine.