Dear Diary

The Beginning

After 42 years of living together
There's not much you cannot predict about him
And after forty steady years
The monotony catches up
And stability is something you cannot give a fuck about anymore
You crave the reckless urgency
Of the beginning
And you want to begin again
But the thing is
You cannot
You are too comfortably deep
And when you see the new lovers
Your glances are tinged in bitter nostalgia
And you resent him
Sitting there, so unaware
He'll walk up to the fridge for no reason
You think
And when he does
Although you're smiling
You resent him
And you wanna begin all over again
With someone new
You don't stop loving him
You still hang the towel on the handle of The bathroom door before he goes in
Every morning
You know he'll forget
See you know
But the fun part
Was knowing
Now you remember your parents
And how sad you thought them to be
Their life was a chore, you thought
And now you wanna retrace the years
But dear, you did nothing wrong
The disconnection just settles in your bones
Like your body ages
It's just natural
Now, you are an outsider
Looking in
And you resent the man so much
You pity the woman
She becomes sneaky and spiteful
He becomes weaker and crankier
And they are fighting over
The splattered toilet seat
Or his wheezing through the night
Or her lack of sympathy
They are fighting
always
And there seems to be no love
Just a lusty need to be right
A shimmer of hope
That after this next fight
He'll get flowers to make up
Like in the beginning
Maybe you can begin over
Or maybe he runs out of time
And in a moment the forty years are washed away
And you are back at the beginning
You lament his death
You lament your loss
Because pain so acutely resembles love
Love that hurt so much
Just like in the beginning
When you never even dared to hope
For forty years of a lifetime together

Inspired by: Love In Times of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Márquez