This poem needs little explanation. I’m sure many people can identify with this feeling – the cold realisation that you have lost someone you love:

Would you care if I left?

Would you be bereft? Would you cry?

Or would you sit dry eyed in despair?

Would you? Would you care?

Would you flood the lands with your tears

so in years to come they would fall back as saline rain?

What pain would you feel? What disdain? What remorse?

Would you still force a smile and a laugh

to disguise the lies that slipped from your tongue

and slithered their way down my throat,

to choke my dreams, silent screams in the pit of my belly.

Making a soft jelly of my love, moulded to your chosen shape.

With no escape.

I know, I’m a broken tape.

But would you even know?

Would it show in the lines of your face?

Deep in your eyes, the betrayal and disgrace.

Would you be sad, call me mad or be glad

and rejoice in your limitless space?

Would you care?

Would you gloat and delight in good riddance?

In the chance to dance free, without me.

Without me, would you be happier, brighter, better perhaps?

Free of the traps we both set when the gaps

in our love became chasms no orgasm could bridge.

Your warm liquid lust drained away,

Leaving only empty echoes of whispered tenderness.

Days and night of drought, of doubt, of worry.

I know that we’re lost but the cost is too great.

You’re my best mate, my lover, my brother, my missing part.

My concrete foundations through which all sensation makes sense.

You’re the fence between me and reality’s snarl.

And now as I lose you to the flow of life.

Unremitting and fast, carrying you away,

to vast lakes where the souls of millions converge,

I’m submerged.

Would you care?

If I drown in these deep pools of sadness into which we have sailed.

Would you hear my wails

or would you block your ears to the tears?

I fear we both know.

It’s time. I should go.