Love II

There was,

was a point when

I no longer shied

from an incommensurable fact.

The woman I loved quite madly

had long, long before

dismissed me from her

heart (but no, I said)

and from her bed.

I could say no because

I could, and because

she being variable, perhaps

mercurial tried now and

again to extend a hand

or so, so it seemed

to me. And so I

clung (clung) to hope.

Hope most tenuous,

hope most spare, hope most

bloodied but unbowed.

As time passed so did her

tolerance and as time and

distance are equivalent so

did her distance daily grow,

one by one my points of pride

were pecked, pricked;

life leaked from the

opened wounds.

She would pour the same

salt on the wounds described

here. Where once early on she

would be full of excited

praise now nothing could:

Could engage her interest.

With that disappearance

went any remains of respect

or need or desire or need.

Long long gone now,

No more worth

looking for; no. No more.

All this robbed

me of integrity (as I

understood it) and with

that, self respect; sense of worth:

sense of worth had sustained me.

I now knew myself contemptible.

Here, the proof. The one without

whom I counted life a loss

made clear there was

no point continuing.

She ran so away

to see not me.