Slow Learners

Why were we left with so many responsibilities? Your questionable guidance, my perhaps overly rebellious tendencies... these things have begun to accumulate. I understand that it was slow, but that is how it tends to be. Slow the way a day dips into cold. The dirtying of a pillowcase. A groove in the wood. A loss of contact. Now I am on the stool and you are by the desk. I reach out to strike a piano key, and the note hangs. You look up from your square of lamplight. There is no smile on your face. One of us should have been more aware. I think you would call this failure.