Love is a cul-de-sac.

Life's boulevards and avenues all led her to you.

Now this home lies empty and there's nothing you can do

To bring her back the way the sun rises each morning -

No light here to live by in suburbia sprawling

Without end, houses laid side by side like appalling

Coffins in a graveyard theme park, a land of the dead.

You're only here because of her: its what she wanted -

Mock Victorian, three bedrooms and a big backyard,

Slate grey driveway, paving stones, white roses standing guard

Did you miss something? Was some detail wrong with the scene?

You were husband and wife, then mum and dad, king and queen...

But somehow it wasn't enough, she wanted much more

Of everything, even of you: she wasn't settling for

Peace and security. It was like she needed war.

So it all began with you. You were the enemy.

She wanted life beyond her means without alchemy.

Doomed before you started, didn't know it at the time,

She was aspirational, always the social climb

Was what mattered; bigger house, bigger better car.

One night, you found yourself looking in the huge mirror

You had installed in the ensuite and didn't recognise

Yourself, as if you were a stranger in your own eyes,

Locked in some fatal embrace with a normality

You couldn't reconcile with everyday reality.

She said the voices in your head drove you to do it,

Though they only came afterwards and she knew it.

Giving all you had to her will never bring her back:

Life is a brief one-way street, but love is a cul-de-sac.

© shaun patrick green 2011