Finite Love

 

This morning I woke to an empty house and a lonely heart.  Confusion sat at the doorstep of my conscience as slumber relinquished its control.  Silence echoed through a hallway once filled with laughter, while tears drowned a heart once filled with joy.  The daily paper arrived on time and the blue jay sang his usual song, but this morning I did not hear your voice, nor feel your kiss.

 

You left no note and said nothing, though an empty hanger dangled as evidence of your departure.  And as I, draped in my silk robe, approached the dining room, there upon the table sat a single dried rose, entangled in fresh barbed wire. This symbolic gesture was a potent end to our strange love affair, an injection of pure poison to the heart.

 

“Touché my dear, Touché.”

 

This morning should’ve come as no surprise, but it did.  Even last evening you dressed for bed, kissed my cheek, and snuggled in tight, like you had done so many nights before.

 

As I stood within our humble abode, a home built with sweat and tears, I reflected on the years gone by. At that moment silence never seemed so loud and the taste of loneliness so sour.  I once heard in a song that, “one is the loneliest number”; to me no truer words were spoken.

 

In a moment of haunting revelation I felt a remnant of you tickle my heart, then fade away like a bad dream.  I turned in hesitation, but you were not there.  In the distance, the clock caught my attention and I witnessed the first minute to the rest of my life.  Your final smile and last memory were then overcome by the striking of a new hour. 

 

Today I woke to an empty house, a lonely heart and the meaning of finite love.