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.
