The game grows stale yet we keep playing. You tell me
it is not a game, but if I don’t follow its rules
I won’t know what I am supposed to do.
Day after day, year after year, the same two players
on the screen. No mercy rule allowed, though I try
to reinvent, you will have none of that. You are
the powers that be that won’t change at thing.

I reach out to touch the glass, to change the channel,
but it is only a mirror and there is no remote. The face I see
is the one you have given me. I hear you from the other room,
moving forward, knowing you could do it without me but still,
we hang on. Two junkies who think we need our fix,
can’t picture a screen that shows anything other
than the game we have played for an eternity.

I wake from a dream, it replays in my head, curse you Chantix.
You are still behind glass in a house that we knew but never had.
Over and over, a game played by my favorite team, defeat snatched
from the jaws of victory. A taste left behind that I don’t recall being there
when first I sank my teeth into the meal. I stare into the screen. I ask you
to stand before the mirror where we are reflected,
turned inside out. There is no other truth besides the game.