There was always breakage. You accounted for breakage. You measured breakage. You didn’t know when breakage would happen, but you knew it would. You hoped to minimize breakage, but not to totally avoid it. It couldn’t be done and there were those who relied on some level of breakage to make a living, who cleaned up after it when it happened, who logged it and measured it, who devised plans to avoid it. And there were those who had a hand in creating it, or seeing it through, but no one really liked matrimonial lawyers except other matrimonial lawyers.
expect
INSIDIOUS
They come when you least expect them
appear seemingly out of nowhere
at first so small they go unnoticed
but never unheard, for what they lack
in size, they make up for in volume.
The get beneath your skin, take
root, steal into your heart, and find
themselves in the brain’s synapses.
Before long they cannot be ignored
like a drug for which you need ever
increasing doses as they become more scarce.
You know you are hooked, you know
that cold turkey withdrawal is never
an option, just something about which
you read about and twice a year
you cast logic and economics
two winds of fate, spend lavishly
for you know parents who spoil children
must be admonished and abhorred
and grandparents who do not
should be treated equally so.