Challenging Poetry

some thoughts on the ending of a relationship

remember when our love was fresh and warm?
remember when your every breath was true?
remember back, before our current storm—
we moved as partners—allies, I and you.
but then night fell, and though we held our hands,
our feet forgot the measure of our dance,
so when the light came back the life we planned
was far away, and with it our romance.
where once upon a time your touch brought thrills—
that time is now as distant as our dreams.
and when I hear your voice—my stomach chills,
and I retort with poisons, tantrums, screams.

I bleed with both our words—because I know:
we had so much. like fools, we let it go.

I like sonnets. As I find the iambic pentameter, it's like coming home. I don't write that many of them because most of my rhymed poetry tends to kind of go humorous, and sonnets are so dignified that I find myself wandering into serious topics, which flow easier and more personally for me in free verse. Although I once wrote a love sonnet to a kitchen appliance (a toaster, I think it was) so I don't always do the serious thing in sonnets either.

For what it's worth, I would like to say that this is not about my own life. I was channeling a character from a story I wrote, whose lost more than I've had, but not more than I can imagine.