Before the Breakup

By Olivia Somes

Windowpanes will replace dinner conversations.
Touching will be mismanaged. Distance will seem

motherly. Arms will feel like prison bars, lips like
bear traps. Weekends will become the long suffering

labor. The bedroom will breed landmines where
the wrong jester will turn everything to ash.

Photos will start to linger like hang nails.
Old gifts will function as large gaping wounds.

Footsteps will sound like wheel barrels of cement
with the dreading of the nearness of each track.

Penetration will be penetration, no more, no less.
Bodies will reduce to sand bags waiting for the flood.