Their wedding picture mocked them
from the table
these two whose minds
no longer touched each other.
They lived with such a heavy barricade
between them that neither battering
ram of words nor artilleries of touch
could break it down.
Somewhere,
between the oldest child's first tooth
and the youngest child's graduation,
they lost each other.
Throughout the years
each slowly unraveled
their tangled ball of string called self,
and as they tugged at stubborn knots,
each hid his searching self
from the other.
Sometimes she cried at night
and begged the whispering darkness
to tell her who she was.
He lay beside her,
snoring like a hibernating bear,
unaware of her winter.
Once, after they made love,
he wanted to tell her
how afraid he was of dying,
but, fearful to show his naked soul,
he spoke instead of the beauty
of her breasts.
She took a course in modern art,
trying to find herself
in colors splashed upon a canvas,
complaining to the other women
about men who are insenstive.
He climbed into a tomb
called The Office,
wrapped his mind
in a shroud of paper figures,
and buried himself in customers.
Slowly,
the wall between them rose,
cemented by the mortar of indifference.
One day,
reaching for each other,
they found a barrier they couldn't penetrate,
and recoiling from the coldness of the stone,
each retreated
from the stranger on the other side.
For when love dies,
it is not in a moment of angry battle,
not when feiry bodies lose their heat.
It lies panting,
exhaused,
expiring at the bottom
of a wall it could not scale.
