It’s come to this – an empty house;
a bag of cupcakes from teenage girls
(so neighbourly, so young)
blowing smoke into their hands –
our lakes now frozen over.
“but don’t mind the furniture
on the front lawn, ladies…
what we have here is a failure to
figure things out –
a killing of the old self,
and she could be wrong by morning.”
The only thing we had in common was
that we loved each other;
how waking up beside one another might have
been a small, daily victory.
And now, unshaven,
the squinting,
the icing on your bathrobe.
And all her things (from the closet, from the sill)
left for garbage –
too afraid to come down the stairs on
their own, on their way outside,
to the light,
to the world of get up and gone.
