My mind boggled as I listened incredulously
to the silvery words pouring effortlessly
and copiously from your silken tongue.
Oh no, oh woe is me, were you really,
after all my constant and unending efforts
trying to bring the curtain down once and for all
on our love, the love of my life?

I clung to the hope that you were only trying
to move the goalposts in the ongoing saga
of our torrid yet meaningful personal relationship;
yet, in my heart of hearts, deep in the very soul of me,
I knew it was hopeless, a lost cause, a dying dream.

I looked down in blind disbelief at the silent telephone
as I heard you bring our heartbreaking conversation
to its abrupt close with a clipped and cold farewell.
God alone knows how many buckets of bitter tears
I had wept copiously over my wasted pathetic attempts
to try to build bridges between the two of us,
trying to find a way out of our unending problems,
yet, in the last analysis, all to no avail.

And now that I had finally come up
with what I felt was a truly viable solution,
now that I had really pushed the envelope
and thought outside of the proverbial box,
you had rejected my efforts out of hand,
with cold indifference and an uncaring heart.
How dare you say you were not willing at least
to enter into the discussion along demarcated lines.

How dare you spurn me in such detached and clinical tones,
why oh why could we not sing from the same song book,
for just once in our tawdry little lives?
I sat and wept bitter tears as the reality dawned on me,
your final words ringing in my poor old ears:
you had never really loved me the way I had loved you.
I was heartbroken, crushed like a petal,
all my fondest hopes scattered to the winds.

And yet, if I were to be honest with myself,
I always knew it would come to this in the long run,
we were alike as two peas in a pod in certain respects yet,
in so many ways, in so many crucial ways,
we were as different as chalk and cheese.
After the initial magnetic, compulsive, animal attraction
betwixt us two had worn off, as these things do,
as time passes by like a never-ending stream,
some sort of inevitable unbridgeable sea change
had entered into our intimate relationship
and I knew with the total certainty of the heartbroken
that I had not been alone in realising that.

And yet I had reached out to you,
more in hope than in serious expectation
(I must admit to myself with hindsight)
to try and mend the broken fences between us,
to try and guide us to the eternally sought Holy Grail
of a Brave New World of renewed mutual love and affection.

But now, after hearing your final words on the matter,
I knew there remained one viable choice open to me;
I knew I could not continue to face my dreary
day-to-day existence without the love of my life by my side,
there could never be another you, someone special
to fill my heart with the very unique joy and happiness
I had known with you, and with you alone.
No one, but no one, could ever take your place,
that I realised from the very bottom of my heart.
I knew there was but one course of action left to me
and I was drawn to it inexorably, like a moth to a flame.

I went over to the little antique Louis XIV cabinet
where I kept the very first present you had ever given me,
a beautifully carved oriental dagger we had seen together
in that little antique shop hidden away down a quaint alley
on the Left Bank in romantic ol' gay Paree and which,
once you had seen my eyes light up with appreciation
of its mystic yet magical oriental beauty,
you had romantically bought for me as a secret gift
to show the strength of your then still burgeoning love.

I smiled sadly at the irony that it would be
that same knife which would snuff terminally out
both my very existence and our failed relationship in one fell swoop.
So without further ado, I took the razor-sharp dagger
out of its richly encrusted ancient scabbard and,
ratcheting up my courage to the very sticking point,
gripped it firmly with both my trembling hands,
steeling myself to plunge it deep into my waiting breast.
And the rest could so easily have been history.

But the phone rang and I paused at the last moment,
'Oh God, let it be him, let me live on,' I prayed
hoping against hope it would be my salvation,
and moved over to answer its insistent trilling.
But my silent prayers were not to be answered,
or at least not in quite the same way I had been hoping for.

It was my sister and she, poor thing, was in torrents of tears,
having just discovered her husband had been unfaithful to her
and she could no longer bear to be under the same roof as him
for another single day, nay not a moment longer.
Could she come and stay with me until she had decided
what to do next with the rest of her life?

What choice had I but to say 'of course' to my own flesh and blood?
As I did my very best to console in her sorrow,
I realised that no man is an island,
that to kill myself pointlessly for a lost love
would be rather akin to cutting off my nose
to spite my face and that I had other responsibilities
which I could not shrug off in such a cowardly and cavalier fashion.

Speaking quite frankly, I don't know if there is anyone up there,
in that old blue Heaven up above us in the clear sky,
but maybe God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform.
Maybe I was destined to live on for a greater good,
maybe I had been prevented from going into that eternal night
from which none return for some greater purpose.
Only time will tell me the answer to that question
and I shall have to see what the rest of my life will bring me.

THE END