The Real Thing

 

Some people can finesse the pain of  parting with an ease

So consummate, they manage, somehow, to please

Almost everyone. Not me, memories and dread

Stalled my words, as my penitent caress turned

Her pliant face to mine. Oh help me here somehow

Find the words, because good god she deserves to know

It’s over. A detail of eight years before flared;

In this same bed, my voice thick with desire and freed

 

From shame, I’d said, I think I’m falling in love with you.

Those were my words and so it has been.

 

Of course, it was the nature of her listening that kept              

Us strong. Open mouthed she’d sit, in rapt

And silent reverence at my epic tales of traffic snarls,              

The crazy office pranks, targets, sales                              

Results, team leaders and  strategic plans.

Each night we’d sit beguiled by soaps, our hands

Held tight, a  comfortable,  and safe,  distance

From the sputtering fire I’d built. The prurience

 

Of others in these early days washed over both of us,

Leaving my flesh wet, her skin dry, and squeaky clean.

 

But the burden that our love ordained.

Pressed us  into futile rows over stupid things. Her pain

At my emphatic no to kittens, (with their cutthroat claws) and a navel pierce,

Both achingly desired, descended into fierce

And dreadful tears, albeit singulary mine.

Maintaining deft deflections of double dates confined

Our hols, to pitching tent in the remote

Crooks of  campsites, unpeopled, closed and desolate.

 

As my hair greyed and thinned, jealousy too became my

Provenance, hateful of her beauty, seamless and without crease.

 

Today, and each day now for eighteen months, returning

Home, to find a sink piled high, congealing

Pots and plates, untouched breakfast, her vapid eyes

Watching trash in last night’s sullied lingerie.

The moment had arrived.  I held her close in artificial love

To reach  beneath synthetic hair and found the valve.

One twist, one final lingering kiss.

 I turned away in gasping shame,her single sound, the fatal hiss.

 

 

Beneath the bed my fingers stroked the discreet brown package

Where my new love lay patient, longing for my breath.