In a few years time

I hope we’ll see each other again.

We’ll be in different clothes

with difference faces and partners

who aren’t you or I.

I will smile because

I’ve always been gracious

and I’ve been waiting for this.

You’ll smile too

but it will be weaker, pained,

stretched like papier-mache.

And I hope when your new wife asks

what happened between us,

you’ll say:

‘She was a bird

and I was a cage

of black bars rattling

with rage,

never unlocked

yet with the power to pluck

each feather from her wings.

She had always deserved to fly,

you could see it in her eyes;

small, beady and watchful

but if she ever stepped too close

to the edge

I would give her a mouthful,

of steel, rust and dust.

I wasn’t good enough

so I forced her to believe

it was her;

her fire, her salt,