‘Not your fault’ says he, with his charming smile - but yes, yes it is.
I saw charming charm like it really is.
I continued, deluding me - thought I knew pain.
Refused to know I’d know this pain again.
She though, lives with her status intact.
I, who had little, no longer have that.
There’s not much to salvage in old sad old tales...
maybe a stone-built cottage in Wales?

Laid now on his smooth bed
For the last time, watching dully
Through heavy eyelids the day's colour
Widow the sky, what can he say
Worthy of record, the books all open,
Pens ready, the faces, sad,
Waiting gravely for the tired lips
To move once -- what can he say?

His tongue wrestles to force one word
Past the thick phlegm; no speech, no phrases
For the day's news, just the one word ‘sorry';
Sorry for the lies, for the long failure
In the poet's war; that he preferred
The easier rhythms of the heart
To the mind's scansion; that now he dies
Intestate, having nothing to leave
But a few songs, cold as stones
In the thin hands that asked for bread.

There's something frightening in you,
and I've always been attracted to the things that scare me most.
I guess you could call it a counterphobic attitude.

Just as all these words are meant for ghosts.

But I'm sick of the sound of crunched eggshells,
and the elephant in the room leaves me crowded.

So hand me that broom;
this dust is being swept under the carpet.