Disappointment for Nothing

Night after night I wait for you to try to connect with me emotionally
and I am left like a child abandoned in the night.   
I hear you excited to talk about you. 
I hear about what’s going on at work.  
You rail against the government. 
You tell me all the routes I could take home from work. 
You try to fix the latest sermon I’m working on.  

You don’t try to touch my heart,
just strike my ears with so many words.

Is it a desperate desire
to fill up the growing chasm between us? 
I ask if you’re anxious.
“No,” you reply.

Disabused of the only reason
I could find for all the small talk between us,
I grow silent. 

I stew in disappointment yet again 
that there is no human contact,
just information being tossed about 
like that issued from talking heads on TV
that exchange news reports
of so many dying in distant lands
and pontificating about this and that of no real consequence
while a marriage, heart cut out,
slides dying, unnoticed, beneath our feet
as the broadcast goes on.

I send up yet another flare
by writing yet another poem
evidently just for the record now 
that will be taken and stored along with all the others
in the far recesses of some warehouse
until, years later, it is discarded with all the other worthless trash
as you’re left wondering 
what happened to make us so miserable.

Let me tell you:
It was nothing.

What I long to hear is some indication
that you even see me,
that you care I’m starving for what never comes
or perhaps (dare I dream?) that you’re glad I’m here with you now
sacrificing my time for you
and your career that keeps killing mine
though I wonder why I am here
with years of such disappointment
having turned into silent smoldering rage
that I love you so much
I now almost disdain you

for nothing.

                                      © 2007 Tess  Lockhart. All rights reserved.