The pain starts to manifest itself physically, and my hands shake, crushing the carton as I crumple to the floor and weep without tears, with a mouth that opens yet cannot speak, with a mass deep within that could not be carried out by ones lips, or eyes, or voice, or even by the language of the body.

It is the same way she had wept that morning she had spent mourning the loss of a child, of love that could have grown had we not left it to wear away like some useless, rocky thing. And I had left her at that state.

I pick myself up, wipe my tears as though she is watching, and take to the bedroom once more.

~*~*~*~

I think Ive seen too much. Too much of the present and too much of the past. She is suffering the dotage of knowing me for too long, for too timeless a passage of seven years. She is that tired, as I watch her silhouette slipping back into the sheets, her limbs accused of too much fatigue by the blankets that ensconce them.

Ive left the Coopers engine idle for almost twenty minutes now and release the hand-break.

We are separated not only by the curse of silence, but by palpable, unassailable space. The cycle starts again as I drive away, as she sleeps in that bed, more alone than I.

The streets narrow, and at this new city where I lay the first of many steps, I trace the path of coming home. It is in another street, possessed by a different owner, its steps laid down by a face so new that the magic cackles.

My bed welcomes me and there, beneath the mountains and hills of linen, is a curve delineated from the arcs of a calm river.

I steal back into that place, into the auguries of Never land, sipping the rivers shoulder and whispering, Hey, just drove around to put off steam.

This new-fangled woman, exquisite and unlike Bette, smiles in sleep as I join her. Lying down, I wait, content for now to sail the rivers way. Thereupon the swells and dips of her waters, I drift back, back, back and away; into a place renewed, regained, rippling in its renaissance -mine, which I ought never to regret.