No matter the number by which you decide
to split
the dividend of times I lied
to myself
you’d still have a quotient I wouldn’t know how
to pronounce.

Good sides are derivative and I know mine
suggests communication equals a judicious need
to see
the language of my circumscription—that, in other words, needing
to write
means needing
to outstrip
my speech, leaving only immodest thought to bare.

Once upon an otherwise ordinary
evening, I found I didn’t have
to seek
out and retrieve the telltale slant that, with (despite)
everything, alive is so simply good a thing
to be
no matter the manner of calculations
behind what I may feel or find
to say
or do, blithely adding myself up
to you.