Word Painting

Love is not the moonlit room,

the beautiful light you always think of him in,

love is not the sharing of the ice cream,

he brought you from the local shop that summer,

love is not the beating fountain,

that is graceful like a Hollywood movie,

love is not the gathering of promises,

that consume you with their way of being eternal,

love is not lying next to him,

imagining a decade passing in his breath,

love isn’t the Neapolitan dreams,

that you share in the morning sun.

Love is walking blind,

right into the lions pit.

Pulling back the carpet, she is able

To ravel it into a ball,

And stack it on top of the broken table.

He brings out the yellowing cardboard boxes

With the red tape and starts on the shelves.

She unscrews the light fixture,

Dangling it from her

Index finger, she drops it into the box

And he picks up the doorstop to move gently

In on top of it.

She smooth’s over their coats as she

Aligns them in the suitcase,

Full of cotton that resembles outfits.

He begins to pack away the shoes for

Feet that never walked. She smashes

The silent headphones, he looks up,

Then goes about pushing bright buckles

Into boxes.

The scarfs were a painful

Matter, so in the end, she took scissors

To them. He gathered his tools then started

To scratch the paint

From the walls and catching it in

A tray before emptying it into a tidy, small box.

She moved the pencils from the desk,

Along with the draws and wrapped them all

For transportation.

They boxed, packaged, tidied and wrapped

Away their life.

Then by the morning light,

Locked the front door, pushed the keys

Through the letterbox,

Kissed each other goodbye

And left the house,

A casket of the past they never had.