Precarious

It’s different now, in the evening
when that place has finally seen fit
to give you up, let you come home to me.
The ribbon still sways in the manufactured wind,
but I am less concerned with either of them
or the flame still faithfully flickering in the fireplace
than I am with the pulse beating beside me.
I wonder if infirmity will serve someday
to drive you to the point of preferring a cubicle
to the Haven. I’m almost certain that sort of reality
is now in the past- we’ve each lived enough of hell
to know how precious is the soil we walk upon
in this precarious present.