Happy Anniversary

Someday

   Someone 

       Won’t take you seriously enough 

and it will destroy you

He said

with a familiar prick on his tongue

I watched as the gore slid between his lips 

And spattered on to the picnic table

I listened as he told me about all of the ways

in which I was too brittle

too phony 

to really get anything done

I felt my broad shoulders shrinking 

as he threw jars of pickles

And tore a baguette into indignant fragments

I took note of the way his brow folds 
when he is coughing up eight years of bile

He flung glass jars

I gave stony glares

He bellowed his odious words into polluted air

I hid my spite in flower pots and under salubrious soil

Gently poisoning the garden

Neither of us blameless

And maybe this is how our love ends

I thought

As I stepped away from his rage

Gripping firmly to my own

Maybe this is where we let it rest

Piled up like those fiery, golden leaves

Near the roots of the sturdy tree

Left in a heap

beautiful
And dead