DOPPELGANGER

I’ve been waiting for you to come back.  I’ve waited in other houses, for a car to pull up outside, for a man to return for his dinner.  I’m used to it.  I will wait and hope your death is not permanent and that the other who has taken your place leaves soon, because I don’t like him as much.

Who knows where you went.  You were there for a season - a genius, an artist and a mystery.  You made me so happy.  I saw your death beginning and I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t be told.  The blackness swallowed you up little by little and all those things I loved about you disappeared.  I am left with the other now; I tiptoe around his growing irritation at my questioning presence, obsequiously fulfilling his needs, in the hope that I might entice you back.  Occasionally there are glimpses and I have the comfort of hope.

If I could take my love tinted glasses off, I would be clear sighted enough to see that the transformation is complete.  You are dead and gone.  I have made a commitment to an illusion and it has slipped away, leaving me with what is real and forever.  I am left with the memories, last year’s journal and the stories you once wrote.  I read them in these early hours of January.  I deny disappointment.  Life will go on, a new beginning based on what never was.