Glass

We used to feel like one,
A name spoken of two parts;
Him my dragon,
I his heroine.

But then another sound clouded us,
Broke the rhythm.
I used to waltz,
but now the beats aren’t even,
Him dancing from my grasp;
gasping that new name,
Doubled on the floor
by himself,
Our house become a theatre.

Truth’s a different kind of medicine.
I ask him if he’s had enough.
“No,” he groans, folded over and over
into that strange embrace,
mouthing his graceless catechisms.
“No,” again, he mutters, “never enough.”

And it is never enough,
As he becomes the hunger,
Too deep inside, where I can’t touch him
Through a pain of plain glass, thicker every day.

No, not enough,
I’ll never be enough.
I’m in a dry place, withering alone;
If I enter that embrace I’ll never find him,
and be lost myself.

Time tightens a spiral grip,
and I’m slipping, weary of the lonely ache,
until I think:
Only diseased limbs feel no pain.
Time for surgery.

The first two times I performed this, I got a hissed intake of breath from the audience at the last line - way beyond what I was expecting...!