Gone with a Sigh–dVerse Open Link Night

 

Photo: BlueRidgeKitties.com

Near-winter dampness invades the room,

infects our space, lingers in the air like

twinning wisps of frigid breath and

smoke from your cigarette.

 

You cannot speak or won’t.

Perhaps you heard me. Maybe not.

Or did you seal your ears against the sound

of my newfound understanding?

 

By the ice-etched window, quiet still,

you stand, scratching petroglyphs

with your fingernail, eyes fixed on a quail

huddled in the branches of a juniper.

 

Remembering how I wept

when first I read those words,

(only a girl, I could not comprehend

an ending without joy) I sigh.

 

And though you do not say them now—

not my dear, nor brutal acclamation,

silence screams across the room. It’s true,

you do not give a damn.

 

But unlike Rhett, you stay—

a witness to hope’s dying whisper.

You do not stir the embers struggling

to give warmth. Our fireplace goes cold.

So happy to be back in the Pub with all my poet friends. Sorry to be so late in posting and visiting you. This is an old poem and it is fiction, thank God.