On the heels of the bitter winter that came and settled itself,

burrowing deep into the surrounding forest,

came a certainty, 

like a creeping ice that slowly spread through his chest,

that held him in a tightening vice, 

and that he longed so badly to ignore.

She would not be coming home.

He could hear seagulls in the distance.

"Where are you? Are you with him?"

The silence said it all. 

Like a stone in his gullet.

And he hated himself for asking.

She cannot think about it,

his face when he came upon them together.

The brutal anguish like a keen blade under her skin.

He took what solace he could find,

spending long desolate hours walking the fields,

sitting in the church,

letting the music there transport his very soul 

to such magnificent heights, where all sorrow fled 

his heart and mind.

But each time, upon opening his eyes

his ruined heart was cleaved in two again at his remembering.

Increasingly he felt adrift.

In fact, at times positively lost.

Even work no longer held his fascination,

consumed as he was by dark thoughts of where she may have gone.

Some days, if she thought about his beloved face

 she almost could not remember

why she had even left,

and regret clutched at her heart

until she could no longer breathe.

That day that he had come home early,

Oh! He could not stand to think of it!

His eyes grew hot at the memory.

In the morning the thunder is still there,

rolling around the distant sky.

A dull, clammy day of downpours, 

the lake a soft sheen of grey like a heron's back.

"Are you coming home?

You're not coming home, are you? 

I just need to know."

That day on the beach it seemed the sea knew her heart.
All day she walked, pacing in seething rage at her own weakness.

All of a sudden she had a longing to see him.

She knew then that she would go home in the end.

The garden breathes the faint memory of long-ago children.

It is filled with such ghosts and echoes of other lives.

A lingering sensation of hidden joy.

Sometimes she felt there was no going back.

What did he miss the most?

It was the murmur of her voice in another room,

the quiet hum in the kitchen,

the clink of another knife on a plate at the table.

And in the evening, 

her footstep on the boards outside their bedroom door.

A sunny corner of scented flowers, creeping green.
Each day, when he returned,
late blooming roses filled the evening air with perfume
which greets him like a friendly, melancholy ghost.

From his chair he could see, framed by the trees,
a piece of the sea.
It seemed to float, stars of light
suspended on dancing threads,
as though played by some unseen hand.

This woman can read her like a book- how can she not know?

But for once she does not want to tell her. She wants to hold her secret close.