When love becomes a smothered fire,
The heat and smoke are trapped inside;
As here, contained within ourselves,
Desire and poison, both, go unremarked upon
The dance we dance is formal now:
You know your steps and I know mine.
We each perform our silent parts,
But how we leave the floor with grace, I couldn’t say
The music we once heard is gone,
There’s no one else left on the floor;
Just you, and I, these dishes, and
A series of banal cliches we share, politely
The dance that is a dinnertime;
Our words, wet blankets on the fire
Of what was once spontaneous, and new —
The ritual of rinsing off the plates that we just used,
The empty glasses stored away to clean another day,
Our food, detritus scraped into a bag –
As after every dance, there’s someone
Has to turn the lights off
Who just might catch
The last slight glow
Of smothered fire
To share is human:
Outstanding and elegant!