A new life in the woods

While she explained how I
had been hooked in by
the safety of your emotionally distant traits, I
paddled in the sublime fields of your eyes, spitting
dandelions into stars underwater. We had

been to couples' counselling twice before. The first told us to give up
while the second shrugged a silence that said
we could always kill ourselves together. Romeo and Juliet
was not a warning to us though, more a flashy
holiday brochure, laid suggestively on the coffee table. I sighed

as I saw you draw in the most
painful oxygen molecules you could find, to cover
the sound of my wailing abandonment inside. I remembered in that moment

a novel I wrote when I was fourteen, about two teenagers who meet,
run away together,
and make a new life in the woods. There they help each other through the flashbacks
of their abusive childhoods.
After therapy

we step into a bereaved cold, sludged
coffee cups and dump trucks. I look into your
scared scared soul and scream

come home with me, come home with me, I have firewood,

but my freezing lips won't strike our match, and we dribble
as timetable adults. We have trains to catch and separate flats
in which to feel safe and alone.