Della Roberts
Breaking
Inspired by "The Writer" by Richard Wilbur
And then there was silence, drawn out and uncomfortable.
I was shocked, I racked my brain for words, but words escaped me.
"Six years." She said, her voice hollow, her eyes dull.
"Six. Years."
Six years indeed! What kind of man
Dates a beautiful woman for six years, then decides she's not enough?
I ask her this. She shook her head and takes a drink of the cheap beer
We bought for our private pity-party. "It's like."
She starts and stops and starts again.
"It's like."
"I know." I said. And I knew. There wasn't a word for it, a word for the
feeling.
She waved a hand, a spark coming back into her eye, but it's a bitter
spark,
One full of resentment for the bastard who didn't deserve her
She spoke
"It's like a piece of stained glass." She said, and I listened.
"It's like a stained glass window, and there's a candle behind it
"Making patterns of light dance on the snow outside."
She said it and it was true. I nodded when she paused.
"You love the light show on the ground, it's beautiful. It's almost holy.
"You walk past it every day and it makes you warm.
"And then, one day, it's gone.
"The light broke."
She sighed and took another drink. "That's what it's like." She said to me.
I said to her "It's too bad there isn't a word for that. For that feeling."
She gave me a look, half smiling, half crying. "Oh, but there is. 'Fubar.'"
We laughed then and drank, and I drove her home that night.
On my way home I pass a lighted church
And I pray the stained glass stays whole.