Loving is a muscle you can tire.
It’s a chore that loses its luster
within a week of acquiring
the garden shed.
After the champagne and the frosting,
there are the taxes and the property deeds,
the bathroom sharing, the new letterheads.
A drive to the dentist, a microwaved meal
turns you into a sinking pounamu shell,
used-up toilet paper.
You argue over menus and Thai takeout.
Your wife says she’ll make
Greek Salad every Sunday –
You extinguish into a cabbage.
Jamie Uy (黄洁美) is a Filipino-Chinese-Singaporean high school student. She likes guerrilla art, poetry slams, flute beatboxing, and editing Parallel Ink lit + art magazine. Jamie would like to thank her parents, Jerson and Cristina, and her brother, Jacob, for being wonderfully tolerant of her antics over the years.