Each day I gaze at the rusted metal wall
of the prison that I have adopted.
It mutates each day from light to dark
and blocks my view of the trees beyond.

Her flaming red hair, then so soft and luxuriant
to have me rapt in the cocoon of sensuous love,
is now faded and brittle. Rusting, like us
within our rigid boundaries, built over time.

While the musty smell of platitudes
lingers in our stagnant conversation
her fingertips that once electrified my skin
dance flamenco on the greasy Formica.

There is no escape, there is no beginning.
Hell is other people, as Sartre said.
There is only the comfort of the rusted wall,
the chance to not think any thoughts at all.

I sit and stare through glass, at glass
Her concrete and metal shell from my own metal…