Growing Apart

Why is it

one can absorb the changes;

one cannot? 

One and one make two –

only sometimes. 

At others, one and one

make one and 

one other.

Ideally

when love is full,

one and one make one –

becoming one, being

united 

whole.

(Which is perhaps illusion

or, only sometimes. But still.)

A long friendship

is a kind of marriage –

without the complications

of sex. Without

the financial

entanglement.

Easier in some ways,

more comfortable.

But lives go on, and happen

at times on different tracks.

They can lead

further and further away.

Not a loop rejoining, but

other directions, other

scenery / people /

contrivances for living.

The funny thing is,

you don’t notice. There is

still communication. 

(Communication is stilled

but you don’t notice.)

Until they say something

and you respond 

and they take offence.

And when you look at it

you can quite see why they do,

how it, carelessly, sounded –

only, once, the way it was meant

would have been clear, accepted,

understood, needing no 

explanation. No apology. Not 

between these two.

But it has come to this.

We no longer run

so deep – no longer joined. 

Instances proliferate.

Explanations, apologies:

wasteful. I detach 

quietly. Respond politely.

From the outside.

Written for Poets and Storytellers United at Friday Writings #243, where we are invited to write something which includes numbers.