This was it: our second chance.
It was the time to be better,
for me, for yourself, for the relationship
Yet you came into it the way I left
and my doltish optimism ignored it.
The first time was not an end;
it was a semi-colon in our sentence,
a thoughtful pause in a speech,
but not the applause, not the true end.
You think that this is another semi-colon
but I'm telling you, I feel it in my bones,
This is the period in our sentence,
The closing remark in our speech,
and what comes next is the eternal silence before the applause