FRACTURES IN THE FOOTING

 

FRACTURES IN THE FOOTING

Not that you’ve lost a wink of sleep over this—

no restless nights spent tracing

the fissures of our crumbling friendship,

once hewn from firmer foundations,

a bedrock of trust

now weathered to dust,

its jagged edges

scraping the silence between us.

I imagine you,

untroubled,

your breath steady as a metronome,

while I lie awake,

the ceiling a map

of every crack we couldn’t mend.  

Left to sift through the rubble,

I resort to blaming choices—

yours, mine,

the ones that leached our intimacy dry,

siphoning it like groundwater

from a well once brimming,

its insatiable hunger for substance

gnawing at the roots

of what we built.

We stood on parallel paths,

yet unequal footing—

you, a steady pillar,

me, a shadow tilting,

reaching for a closeness

you never craved in return.  

Though I look back,

my gaze snags on thorns of memory,

I’d rather not squander

what could be fertile hours pondering—

the soil of my mind

churns with questions,

barren of answers.

It’s plain to see, now,

etched in the dust of every step,

on paths we walked side by side,

that I required, desired,

more of you—

your laughter, your warmth,

the anchor of your presence—

than you ever needed of me,

a surplus I poured

into a vessel already full.  

Equilibrium shattered,

a scale tipped by unseen hands,

gravity’s teeter-totter groans

under the weight of my wanting,

its creak a dirge

for balance lost.

It heaves me upward,

ejects me into the air,

a bird without wings,

flailing against the void,

feathers of hope

scattered on the wind.

You stand below,

untouched,

watching my ascent

with eyes that don’t follow,

while I plummet inward,

crashing against

the hard truth

of our uneven ground.  

The nights stretch long,

shadows pooling

like spilled ink across my floor,

and I gather the shards—

not to rebuild,

but to understand

how a friendship so solid

could erode to this:

a hollow echo,

a footprint fading