A few years from now

Staring out the window her back’s against the wall.

She no longer wants to love him, but she couldn’t stop the fall.

Now she’s like a penny. Back and forth between heads or tails.

She knows she has to choose soon, but she’s falling through the air.


There’s a letter on the table. She wrote it weeks ago.

He never noticed it at dinner, and she doesn’t let it show.

That she doesn’t want to be here - the pain is etched behind her eyes.

She longs to hear “I love you,” but keeps getting hard “Goodbyes.”


She had another lover. That was many years before.

When she almost felt the ocean breeze, and smelled the salty shore.

Fingers held by hands, wrapped in arms, and locked by eyes.

She never thought that she could go there, so she never really tried.


Convinced that the commitment would trap her in a cage.

Now realizing she’s on the inside. She could have broken free that day.

Her lover is on the mend in a tiny artist's bungalow.

Her husband is on the dance floor eying a girl she doesn’t know. 


There’s a chance that she was wrong back then. There’s a chance she’ll never see,

That the love she could have had was an unwritten mystery.

Her breath lies cold against the glass, another winter spent alone.

She leaves the letter on the table. She knows he isn’t coming home.


Pulling back the blankets, she’s fighting back the tears.

She’s tired of keeping it together. She’s been doing this for years.

Silence settles across the room. Her steady breath, the only sound.

And in the distance, a rolling ocean wave, before the tears fall crashing down.