before & after

before the meeting of

“the one,” s/he had the

clock ticking in his/her head---

tick tock tick tock &

every day could be written down

ahead of time, scripted like a

horribly mundane & clichéd

movie---one where the audience

gets up & leaves or spends the

time yelling at the screen.

 

before, life had lost its flavor &

the cruel realities of age had begun

to creep into the face, carving

deep lines that s/he couldn’t scrub

off & that just wouldn’t budge

when smeared with the most

expensive anti-wrinkle cream

s/he could find on the market.

 

and then, oh then, the world

seemed to flip right over, shining

what appeared to be a warm

comfortable spotlight on our

tick tocking wretch---for s/he

“had found the person that s/he’d

always been looking for” &

all of a sudden his/her world

made sense, so down went the

scriptwriting pen & a life of

living in the moment, enjoying

the perceived beauty of the

present, engulfed the once

tick-tocker.

 

cut to after---because all “good”

things come to an end, as they say:

didn’t end through f*****g outside

the happy dappy, didn’t end due

to financial ruin on either part, no

boredom had grown in the heads of

either---fair to say they’d been

ecstatic right up to the bitter end &

the bitter end occurred when

one got sick & the other didn’t.

 

after,

the one who didn’t get sick

goes back to the script, back to

the predictable, back to the tick

tock tick tock, back to the

mundane, the cliché, all with

the notion that “the one” was

just another that would leave

them, regardless of their hopes,

their dreams & a will to do

differently.