I remember us speaking when you returned,
Yet we spoke not of your most rank deceit,
Preferring platitudes as if we’d learned
That biting rancour thrives on harsh critique.
Deft words did probe my heart as if to find
Perhaps an ember left in ashes grey,
A little spark or glow love left behind,
Sweet breaths unto a flame might there parlay.
Puffery was wasted, the hearth stayed cold;
Stone cold, without a glim of hope afore,
And where once smarm could rattle dying coals
Into a raging pyre; now here no more.
This love, black cinders where no Phoenix lives:
Five hundred years or more could not forgive.

© Loubert S Suddaby. All Rights Reserved.