The End of Love

She was in her kitchen,
with the cool blue impenetrable quiet
she had craved and she remembered
the excursion of his warm hand
on her skin, the idea of a family
he had embodied, the strength
of his love for her still intact,
like a city underneath the earth
that had failed to fully prosper.
She remembered the day they had met
when they were young and different,
and she probed that moment
as she did all things until she was exhausted
by the what-if and whatnots and what would come to pass.
She saw her entire life pass
into all the objects in the house,
and she was reminded
of the familiarity of a full life as she had lived it:
the symmetry of color, of shapes so perfect
you didn't want to touch or disrupt
the arrangement; the orchestration of their bodies;
how they had grieved,
the quiet distillation of his essence,
filling her house with breaths
so unlike her own.
When it happened, it came as something inevitable,
without expectation, without notice,
with a life and force of its own,
changing everything, even the quality
of air they had grown to depend on,
and they hadn't known how to stop it,
and then she knew it wasn't the end,
it was only the beginning.