Poems For Her

poem 14

"My mother and father fell out of love. It took six years for them to rot. It was slow. It snuck up on them through extra sips of wine at dinner and spaces between them in bed. It was quiet, it whispered in their ears and snuck into their heads and hid between busy thoughts, they barely noticed but it chipped away at them until they crumbled into empty shells that couldn't stand to look at each other. They never fought. They kissed each other sometimes, but never at the right times, never like they meant it. I think when the water rises so slowly and silently and wraps itself around you in the form of routine and comfort and the fear of leaving, you don't really realize you're completely submerged until you look at yourself in the mirror one day and you're dripping wet and you can't breathe at all but you're used to holding your breath by now. It didn't hurt. At the end of it they were gone. They were ghosts. I don't know if they could even feel it. It wasn't this killer, movie-scene, hollywood heartbreak, just a dull ache that could be drowned out if you just pretend it isn't there. So when you were mine in the morning and a fucking hole in my chest three hours later it swallowed me whole. I didn't know it could happen so quickly, a lighting bolt of heartbreak, there was no thunder to warn us. One second I was yours and the next I was on the floor and I could smell my skin burning."