A hearty breakfast

We take our coffee black these days,
Saccharined and sugar free.
Our milk of human kindness soured
To curds and whey, to you and me.
And over silent breakfasts sit.
Where headline barricades rise up.
We shed no tears for what was spilled,
When lips once kissed our loving cup.
Our toast is dry and always burned,
The marmalade, now bitter peel
And all we’ve left is crusts and crumbs
For evidence of what we feel.

At eight we separate our days,
You wait for trains, I take the bus,
To different worlds and hours to think
Of what might now become of us.
Then at day’s end we dawdle home
Reluctant in our weary walk.
To distant TV dinners where
We never need to touch or talk.
Our bedtimes now, which once were one
We measure by the clock’s bleak chime,
And dreams of love that’s been and gone
And all that's left, are walls … and time.