Love Construct in the Covidicene

It’s a protective scaffolding, really.
We have known these bones of our structure

to be ever so simpatico to begin with.
This morning, we gird ourselves for day

number eighty of our New York Times
crossword streak, and we’re still

killing it, still conversing
in complete, reverential

sentences. Bravo to us. And yet,
the worm of the familiar

is chomping through the detritus
of this pared-down world, true-blue

romance bound by chores and compost.
I can’t fathom the irrevocable

absence of you, and while
we’re on that subject, you still

haven’t shared with me
the combination to the safe.

Robbie Gamble’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Cutthroat, RHINO, and Rust + Moth. He was the winner of the 2017 Carve Poetry prize. He is the associate poetry editor of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, and he divides his time between Boston and Vermont.