Specimen: The Argument, Recurring

We have had this argument so many times it has worn a path. We could find it in the dark, and do. It is about nothing. It has always been about nothing — the nothing is essential, the nothing is load-bearing. If it were about something we would have to solve it and then what would we walk, the two of us, on the bad evenings, what groove would hold us when the day has gone wrong and neither of us did the wronging? So we keep it. We tend it like a hedge. You take your usual line. I take mine. The words are so old they have gone soft in the mouth, like stones a river has been working since before the children. And at the end of it we are tired, and known, and have proved once more the path is still there, still ours, still leads back to the same lit room, the same two chairs.