It was dead, what they shared,
and he realized it as much as she.

With love like a coelacanth, gone
was the small butterfly that once nestled in their breast pocket,
occasionally fluttering its wings in a dizzy dance.
The fossil of their relationship was
far more easily located than the living specimen nowadays.
Now, loud nights spent tearing into each other’s ego
as a lion does its prey and as the two stand on a pier,
even now she is circling, waiting for his next mistake.

But for a second, a dark glance on the seafloor.
Beneath, the coelacanth made a steady process,
huge,
and rested directly beneath them.