Check the Small Print

This territory you’ve staked out, in the mistaken belief that it is yours:

when you check the small print,

you’ll discover it doesn’t belong to you,

however vehement your claims.

I demanded conditionality,

preferring confinement to the expanses beyond.

I kept accounts; favours done, debts incurred

All weighed in the balance

as I exacted my imagined dues

(I thought life owed me

and I thought you did, too)

We bleed ourselves dry trying to make life abide

by our caveats, clauses, and conditions.

Without them, I am so outrageously, indecently alive.