It was not his marriage
Nor his divorce
The estranged couple were no strangers
But they were not his friends
He'd simply witnessed the marriage from its conception

Spent years working parallel to it
All three of them with sweat and sunburns
Until calluses grew on their heels
One summer he lost his voice, she sprained a finger
And her boyfriend- later fiance- repeatedly tore open the same paper cut
Yet still they toiled under the sun

Waving their arms like advertising balloons at a car dealership
They stood behind a folding table
A stack of books, freshly smelling of ink
Free magazine, they cajoled, take a free copy!

Once they tried bribing pedestrians with pizza
Take a slice with your free magazine!
They peddled poems that no one wanted to read
It was thankless; they were shameless

But while he paced in his apartment all these years later
Naked
Drunk
Alone
He read poems out loud, gesticulating to an empty room

Heedless of his open window
He performed
The words were flawlessly tragic
Delivery: not so much (don't blame a drunk for slurring)
Melancholic poems are like fine wine, he thought
And drove himself to tears

But, he mused, at least I made the sensible choice
I didn't go and get tangled
Those fools, his peers, had unraveled
Separated, but stained
Would they ever get clean of it?

No, it wasn't his marriage
And it wasn't his divorce
But he felt sympathy
No! Empathy
For all three of them would die alone
And their poems be buried with them