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. |