The wallpaper in that office
Has a pattern,
And so do they.

He says
If she really loved him,
She’d see how hard he is working
And appreciate him,
And that he needs to feel appreciated;
She says
He began breaking his promises
The day they got married,
And has never stopped breaking them,
And that he doesn’t really see her
At all.

No one “wins”
At couple’s counseling;
But when you feel no sympathy
From your partner,
It is natural to seek it
From whomever might be at hand.

But a counselor is not an arbiter,
There to lay down a judgment
As to who is right and wrong,
They are more like healers
Whose guidance may be heeded
Or not.

Locked in a pattern can be
One of the hardest places in the world
To escape from;
And they would have a better chance
If they could work together.

(Of course,
If they could work together,
They probably wouldn’t be there.)

People want better,
But wander into inevitability;
Patterns become prisons,
And those prisons become
Places people sentence themselves to

Where voices are raised,
As they stare in opposite directions
Towards brightly colored wallpaper
That might have been used
For their children’s

unfinished

 
rooms