SPARRING PARTNERS

“Do we have anything left to say to each other?
You don’t love me anymore,
you won’t miss me when I’m gone,”
the mantra of muddled brains, married too long.

A bickering wife jabs a fork into her husband’s thigh.
He’s been aiming sarcastic digs at her with the accuracy
of a camouflaged sniper. Battered and bruised,
they cling to each other like staggering boxers in a rancorous hug.

Since the end of the honeymoon phase they’ve been feuding
like countries at war, trapped in a cul-de-sac of mutual enmity.
The art of differing no longer works as they claw at each other
with arthritic hands and venomous diatribes.

When a frying pan clunks on his head, they wrestle and stumble,
flopping and bopping each other like slapstick buffoons.
A Baccarat decanter and Littala wine goblet splatters a wall.
Their unhappiness could be funny if it wasn’t so tragic.

Their lives are almost over and they no longer remember
the rainy afternoons when they couldn’t get enough of each other.
Lost in the sturm and drang of a lamentable bond, sparring partners
with fiery tongues sustain a life of mutual ennui.

It’s hard to believe this love exists and suffers, wounded as no other.
If only they could declare a truce, big hearts might open again
and in a luminous haze of good will reach for each other’s hand,
recapturing union and oneness, all they ever really wanted.