Honest things

 

You summarised our time together with ordinary phrases,

“Enjoyed that time at Zoe’s, didn’t we? And those other places?”
The summing up itself was the closure, though I didn’t realise
the purpose to your conversation, the frustrated half-sighs
and a refusal to meet my eyes till much, much later;
and when I did, the whole thing had almost ceased to matter.
Nothing really, just a pang that leave taking was so concise,
a vague disquiet that honest things can also end in disguise.

 

Often the wounds are made and healed, a scratch here or there,

and farewells said in strange formats, while we remain unaware.
You could have shook me by the hand, looked straight into my eyes.
But you didn’t. And taught me that not all untruths are lies.
For one of the pair things closed that day, for the other nothing changed,
one still kept her weekends free just as both had arranged.
But no-one came back to knock.  Many days and many goodbyes
had to be flipped to understand what a summing up implies.



Shared at dVerse where we are exploring poetry written in the second person this night.