The shock was solid as a punch

That left me breathless, faint, unmanned;

So obviously lost that chair and water came

And it was I – so very briefly – nursed

Until my mind began to grasp the truth it had shunned.

 

How could I not have guessed or known

The woe, the pain, the destruction?

After all these many years, my failure to feel –

My hiding from the very possibility of horror –

Still strikes: so hard as that first blow.

 

We became blind through intimacy

Yet we were one union of body, heart and soul

I lived within her and she within me: one mind, one thought,

But the bond failed – I did not comprehend her need.

She left,

            and I live on knowing the chasm of that failure