Our crooked mail was bleeding surreptitiously
through its envelope.
Upon opening – gingerly – the crusted folds
(obviously, the delivery had reinvigorated
the wound), we sighed with relief
even as the paper therein snarled
its intent to drain us of
our combined incomes with bold-formatted and triple-underlined
claims that sounded like they were generated by
a program, not written by a cogent and reasonable
human being.

Foregone conclusions in mail extortion
being one of the signifiers in the
fall of the Roman Empire, we knew,
in a dead second it was either us or it.
Wordlessly, Ron and I danced the mail
to the sink, cornering it with the
mercy it had shown us and we drowned it
to a pulp, then finished it off
with the garbage disposal.

Just to be precariously indulgent,
I bleach bombed the drain and plugged it
with the stopper. Nothing must return
to infect our other correspondence.
We count our guest appearances
in civil dinners, and consider ourselves
pen pals with battle scars.

We are victors.
We demolish the undead.