Libra

The one who pulled the trigger with his toe, spread-eagled on his girlfriend’s parents’ bed, and split his face in halves above his nose, so that one eye looked east, the other west; sometimes that sad boy’s bifurcation seems to replicate the math of love and grief — that zero sum of holding on and letting go by which we split the differences with those with whom we occupy the present moment. Sometimes I see that poor corpse as a token of doubt’s sure twin and double-mindedness, of certainty, the countervailing guess, the swithering, the dither, righteousness, like Libra’s starry arms outstretched in love or supplication or, at last, surrender to the scales forever tipped in the cold sky.