Poleridge

He eats for breakfast broken concrete, whale-gray, in the dregs of mineral water. His tooth snaps off. I mash my own cereal, frosted wheat, in the blue ceramic bowl that came with the house. The house was a fixer-upper. Mold in the grout. Jacketed wires grew like tree branches from the ceiling, and a two-foot-wide cylindrical pole consumed the breakfast nook. My housemate and I bonded over our shared hatred of the pole, though I did not hate it so much. He found it an eyesore, and I was newly divorced, horny, and gullible in my desperation. I lit tapers, did dishes, baked cookies. I dressed the pole up for every occasion. Skull beads for Halloween, holly garlands at Christmas. Only, when I took down the garlands, I noticed the pole had splintered down the middle, forming a triangular slice of crumbling cement. My housemate surveyed the damage. I half-expected an accusation. Instead, he got down on one hand, one knee, nose to the pole, and his tongue darted out, an afterthought. He lapped at the crevice and I wished it was me. In a fixer-upper, all crevices fill in time. I gave him time, weeks crouched at the pole with a pickaxe, his brow flour-coated with dust. He portioned the gray slabs into glass bowls, stacked them in the freezer for later. I thought, mistakenly, it would be over. I made omelets, scrubbed toilets, smoothed corners. I wore lingerie in the kitchen. I poured half a cup of almond milk in the blue bowl for breakfast. My cereal tastes like glue. He crunches, and the ragged concrete carves sigils down his esophagus. His yellow-moon tooth sits selfishly on the table. He asks will I try it for him. I stare above myself, at the caved ceiling where the pole once stood, at the dangerous bulge of drywall and chipped copper paint, soft with age, and I reach to take up space, to hold the house up with my dark matter. He reaches across with his spoon, chunks of concrete swimming in my vision like snowflakes. I open my mouth. This will be the first choice I ever make.