It’s not mine

I wish it was. It’s just rather beautiful, when you’ve got through what relationship advisors call the stupid cow/what a bastard stage depending on gender, when you can think without whatever it is making the wrong connections in your brain and making you not you at all, everyone forgets that Icarus also flew; that there were two of you in this, whatever it was. And if it went wrong for you it went wrong for them as well. And that neither of you meant it to.

It’s Spring soon

Things end. But things begin as well, all of the time. Every day. So deep breath. Head up. Shoulders back. No name-calling. And smile. As Nat King Cole used to say.

Failing and Flying, Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights
that anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe that Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

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