The Argument/Beth Kephart Poem

The slide down
by slide of rain.
The argument
that we stopped having
over fiction.
Calling each other
by our last names again,
to nearly prove that we didn't mean it.
That I will be right
and you will be right
and the end begins the end.

The biggest fight I ever had
was not my own.
It was trapped in the wall
at Gaskill Street where
I was young—
the baroque aftermath
of a man and woman's war,
the heel of a shoe as the spike,
the color red.
I don't particularly care
that she left him afterward.
The rage remained.