Susan P. Blevins

They surveyed each other, blank faced
across disheveled breakfast dishes
the space between them a gaping
chasm that devoured their unvoiced
thoughts and unspoken words

What had brought them to this
frozen desert of disconnection
after a good beginning and years of
laughter and shared adventures, and
good sex too. At first

Was it their forty years of marriage that had
sucked the oxygen from the life they’d shared?
The Italians use a colorful culinary term to describe
this condition: sempre la stessa minestra,
always the same soup. Monotony

Now, the realization of demise
stole whatever words they’d used before
killed any living spark that might have
survived this sudden, perhaps not so sudden, drought
withering the air, a dry and lifeless leaf

Wordless, she rose
made no backward glance, nor redundant comment
He sat, briefly bereft before
sinking into the dubious new truth
the reduced vision of a solitary life