We've had some fun 
but our story is complete
The moral knife still twisting deep
That improper thing must always be beat
So, you turn your back 
and off you creep

Promising me each memory
you’ll fondly keep
And with my battered trust 
and my itchy feet
how firmly you believe 
I’ll casually retreat
back into the dark
at the end of the street

We knew the rules, we knew the game
and still we had to cheat
We wrote through sun 
and rain and sleet
We thought ourselves immune
our passion so discrete
now the choice is made
we casually hit ‘delete’

You’re so sure 
my heart won’t miss a beat
we blackened many notebooks
we tore out many sheets
So much goes unsaid
those poems stay incomplete
All filed away in the dark 
at the end of the street

Do you think me as some devil
replete with tricks and treats
it seemed like art at first
something so unique
An open mind, an open cage
a bird that often leaves
And yet here we are again
that same story on repeat

What made your soul once leap
now feels so obsolete
Was there always something missing
a fatal flaw in this conceit
It no longer matters
our time, we did deplete
my footsteps fade into the dark
at the end of the street 

Where I fein my understanding
and wrestle with relief
Peering out 
through the dampening eyes of my defeat
I’ll fold myself so small
my vanishing so neat
I slip from this scene 
back into the dark 
at the end of the street…
 

[2022]