The Beginning Poem by Carol Smith

In the beginning she knew…
then she ignored it…
and now she realized she could no longer deny,
she admitted once and for all
that he was never
never going to love her.
Not really.
Not the way she so desperately yearned to be loved.

His love was more necessity than passion,
more duty than desire.
And even though this language has but one word for those two loves,
The difference between them was as vast as the space between the shores
of the widest ocean
and every day
she drowned again in its water.