Sunday didn’t try
       to be dramatic.

Which was kind.

I spent the morning
  fixing the bathroom
  exhaust fan,

  because sometimes
  the house gets honest
  before I do.

Something hums wrong.

Something quits moving air.

Something small
          starts making the whole room

          feel worse than it has to.

So you take it apart.

Look at the wiring.

Clean what can be cleaned.

Replace what finally stopped doing its one good job.

Then Orca and I
     went to the park
     for the long version.

Extra long.

Plenty of running.

The kind of walk
    that lets a puppy
    spend every ounce
    of her excellent chaos

                  on grass,
                     shade,
                 squirrels,

  and whatever urgent news
 lived under that one leaf.

She needed it.

I probably did too.

Meanwhile, our thread stayed alive.

Not ceremonial alive.

Actually alive.

Lit up.

Moving.

Passing little pieces
        of the day
        back and forth

        like we were keeping a small fire fed.

But you were sad again.

And some of that sadness
     had my fingerprints on it.

Saturday still there,
         sitting in the room
         like smoke

         I thought I had already walked away from.

You were over there
     trying to name

     what your heart was doing.

Self-diagnosing,
     because sometimes
     the brain grabs a clipboard

     when the hurt won’t sit still.

And I was over here wondering
    if maybe I should stop pretending
    my own wiring is a sealed unit

    I can service by instinct.

Maybe the fan
       wasn’t the only thing in my house

       that needed to vent better.

Maybe there are rooms
      inside me
      I keep asking
      you to enter

      before I’ve figured out
      how to clear the air.

That’s not a confession
       dressed up
               as a solution.

Not yet.

Just the thought
     sitting there
     with a screwdriver
     in its hand,

     looking at me
     like:

     buddy,
     we may need
     a professional.

By evening,
    I was at Irby’s.

You were on your couch.

The thread stretched between us,
    warm enough to count as being somewhere together.

Carolina finished Vegas.

The Cup found its way
    into Hurricane hands.

Somewhere, a whole season exhaled.

Me at the bar.

You at home.

Both of us
     watching a thing
     reach its ending

     from different rooms.

That feels
     a little too neat
     for real life,

     so I’m suspicious of it.

Still, I’ll take the shape.

The finish.

The breath after.

The small mercy
    of something
    getting decided cleanly

    for once.

Sunday didn’t fix anything.

Not really.

It fixed a fan.

It tired out a puppy.

It kept a thread alive.

It let a team lift a trophy.

It put one more
   uncomfortable question
   on my workbench

   and didn’t let me look away.

That may have to be enough
     for one uneventful day.

Air moving again
     in one room.

The rest of me
    still learning
          how to breathe.