Morning Routine

[Delta40]

We laughed like coloured balloons
in a room full of streamers and party poppers.
Our love was the sweetest bowl of punch.
It's all there in sepia at the back of the closet,
behind the set of towels we never use.
I can sense your resignation each morning as you
spend a brief moment studying
my aging smile before turning away.
Yes, after all this time, nothing has changed.
I'm the same person you looked at lastnight.
Our backs barely touch as we lie there
wallowing in constructed worlds of self-pity.
We move silently around the home
seeking comfort in junk mail and hard yolks,
deaf to flocks of cockatoos and galahs outside.
The kettle is eternally brought to the boil
but the flame of passion dwindles.
I feel like Eeyore chewing out of season thistles
and yet I'm still here.

[Bar22do]

I first read the title "mourning routine"! and got chills! But the poem isn't that sad, it reaches such universal dimensions of life of habits, repeated patterns and - attachment, passionless but solid and disarming.
Beautiful poem Delta.

[AuntShecky]

I agree with Bar's comment.

What makes this one work are the details-- the sepia photos behind the seldom-used towels.

[symphony]

I'm young and afraid.

[Hawkman]

Loved the Eeyore reference ;) I thought this was particularly well penned Delta, great images for a pessimist.

Live and be well - H

[Buh4Bee]

It's very vivid and tangible. Much enjoyed.

[Haunted]

A picture of despondence in photographic clarity, accentuated in sepia to show the growing detachment with the passage of time. It is all too real, as for some it's exactly how their marriage lives turned out.

"and yet I'm still here" carries a double meaning. Is the narrator there for each other regardless, or is she suffering the fate of "till death do we part?"

This is a great work Delta.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I believe that this:




The kettle is eternally brought to the boil

is the painful quintessence of this brave, sad poem. The last line, of course, invites us to interpret it in any way we please (or don't please!).

[Delta40]

Thanks everyone. Hawk, you're not saying I'm a pessimist are you?