To Live Apart -- Brian Johnstone

That faint booming as cars coast across the bridge,
the ravenous slap of wind on glass
conspire to turn the thoughts in one direction:

your going. A night like any might have been
before you crossed the road, waited for the lift
that you’d been taking there for years. I watched you go,

dividing in my mind the spoils of that brief war,
taking pictures from their nails, photographs from frames
that later, in the garage, I would break. The images

I kept, buried them beneath the surface of my days,
below the passports, door keys, airline tickets,
beneath the scars.

The tissue heals, knits back. The fabric of the mind
repairs itself. I listen, waiting at the corner of the road,
wondering, what was that sound?

Source: Unknown. Approx. 1995.