Passing through the Membrane

When nice stopped meaning precise

or when mean was transformed from low to unkind

when still traded always for up till now

and sophisticated skied into a compliment

we can never quite know. One day

he said “I love you still” and she wondered what she’d done.

But to be safe, she didn’t say.

They broke up the next day.

Years later he told his second wife

that she was kind of sophisticated,

but nice,

if you know what I mean.

A neat tart, she thought,

of some oxymoronic sort

and said so. So he lost

his second wife as well

for being mean.