Those words you said to me that became our last,

Did you know they knocked the breath right out of me?

You used to take my breath away but that day you left me breathless.


In that moment I knew it was over

I knew it because I was done.

I knew we had taken our last knock,

That everything we had so carefully,



All the love, all the miles, the thousand upon a thousand miles

we had traversed. Wasn’t enough, they were not enough,

(were they ever enough?) to withstand that final blow.


Death by a thousand cuts, death by a thousand miles,

a thousand upon a thousand miles. And more than that

Death by a thousand wishes for each other that we could not fulfil

in this lifetime. In our timeframe.


I do wonder, if we had met each other in another moment

would we have lasted?

Would we have built the empire together that we dreamt of building,

or would it still be ruin.

A crane over the sky of this vast, desolate construction site.

Unfulfilled potential is something I hate.


I can still see the blueprints

I return to them sometimes in the witching hour,

When I’ve had a glass too much red wine.

Worse, much worse though

Is when they strike me between the eyes

in the midst of experiencing. Falling in soaring in,

scaling the heights of, testing the breadth of—

Something new. And I accidentally compare it to you.

The blueprints of your restaurant, of our holiday home,

of our children, of our marriage.


My heart still aches.


I sketched the foundation, make it visceral and real

Spread out on the drawing board

In depth and in detail, in granular discussion,

The expert way you rendered them in 3D,

Conjurings, alive and ephemeralteamwork.


But what is living in the land of the dead?


We light the match and watch it burn.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.


There is but one pillar left standing:

Mutual Respect.


I’ve heard it’s less romantic,

but a lot more solid.


—Jennifer McGeever


Feature image: Some life drawing sketches, hanging on one of my bedroom walls, taken a few moons back ♥