Jilting

Jilting

With your beard newly full
and the banks of your eyes
failing, I turned, unceremoniously, and left.

An altar of stone, countless arches
receding to the kind of tiny ache
that grows to insurmountable heights.

This, put plainly, is loss.
It’s every friend I ever left,
the time I narrowly escaped arrest

protesting some illegal war or another
only to watch it unfold in night vision
on the cable news networks of the day.

Grandiose gestures are the bricks
we hurl at inefficacy, only to wind up
pushed down, wriggling out of flexicuffs.

Please wait for me at home, as I await
processing. I swear I’ll make it up to you,
I swear this time I’ll stay and fight.