Two Were Once One

I've known you now for forty years, and yet you seem to lack familiarity. I used to smile, dance a foxtrot with you - and trip with joy and hold that friendly hand. But where am I to find you? When, indeed? You're still alive but sitting with no twinkle? No love of me - the friendship we did share? No wrinkle in your eyes, no upward lips? That greatest shame, which so casts out what was a thing that used to bind us - keep us close, as part of one another's being - now shows such an absence, such a misery. It's now a void, the blackest chasm that could part two people - two who once were one. (Jan 2023)