the neglected

how it came to be this way,

s/he just can’t believe---

as the cliché goes,

“it seems like just yesterday”

that they had been rolling,

bouncing,

drilling in the hay &

yet,

s/he wasn’t spared what others

told him/her would be

the

inevitable---

for soon, interest in the rolling,

the bouncing & the

drilling

to the heights of that once

compassionate bond

between the two of them,

on the part of

her/his still significant

other,

faded &

dissipated away,

to the point where

the suggestion of separate

rooms was made,

for “it really is easier to

sleep in a bed alone,

honey,” s/he

was told quickly.

 

increasingly embarrassed as

the days go by, to have to

walk that long hallway in order

to knock on the door of

her/his past-lover who is now

simply a housemate,

to ask for the scraps of intimacy

that may be left,

that might be allotted to him/her

before it has all washed away

entirely,

s/he starts to change her/his look,

s/he gets a different hairstyle &

s/he starts to become receptive

to those around him/her that

might want more than a chat

by the fax machine or a stroll

outside the facility after

lunch---

where it will go, where it

can go, nobody knows,

but one can believe that s/he

feels guilty, because

that good ol’ christian upbringing

has instilled in him/her

a complex, which hid his/her own

sexuality

for so many years &

now it spreads inside

like the most rampant of cancers,

beating against the walls inside

her/his brain, that s/he must

be devoted,

that s/he must do what s/he must

in order to keep a

“happy” home,

that s/he must deny her/his own

body,

that s/he mustn’t indulge during

the

only

life

that

s/he

has &

so, just around the bend is not only

the end of a “relationship,”

but also the end of

a “faith,”

one that should have been dead

long ago &

the neglected lover,

the neglected believer,

will no longer be neglected.

once s/he puts her/his foot down &

walks away from it all.