Lamentation on the Limitations of Love

[danetyler]

20 years out:
bird plucked clean,
no gleaming
sheen of feathers,
no pretense left to preen,
I stood,

a naked fool
well-groomed for ridicule.
You must thus address me-
for it is so:
your salient points
assailed me;

my frail defenses
failed me.
And by the time
that we knew we knew,
it was far too late:
the incongruence

had grown too great,
our love engulfed,
gone in a gulp.
Subsumed
under that sad truth,
stunned, we sit.

Left to fester in silence,
the constituent elements decay,
dissolve.