Drifting Apart Poem by Cheryl L. DaytecYañgot

Shared silence was an act of intimacy,
a conversation under Cupid’s auspices
All it took between them was a wink,
or just an innocent smile, or a stare
and their thoughts would scamper
to the same direction like migratory birds
escaping the arctic cold for the tropical heat

Twenty years, seven months, four weeks, six days.
What year’s calendar was hanging on the bedroom
wall when intimacy backslid into habit?
At what point did the common pursuits
become individual crusades?
In which lap of the journey did a
singular path split into two parallel lines?
How deep was the dark when the dream
precipitously relapsed into an incubus,
like a plot that descended into an anticlimax?

Today, they sit over cups of cappuccino
in the verandah of their imposing castle
Seven wide bedrooms, each with its own
comfort room, one attic for storing history,
two cozy living rooms, one family room for
a family that no longer exists in meaning
More than any other day, the silence pervading
the space between them is so profound,
Not still. Rather reticent. Each could hear

the thoughts of the other. How eloquently
Silence articulates prayers for freedom
from a marriage gone to the sepulcher

How isolated each feels in the other’s presence.
In the same spot. But in different worlds…
A titanic sacrilege of an ancient sacrament.

As if themselves insulted,
two cups of steaming hot cappuccino
grow cold.