A question, no urgency to answer:
This blank emptiness and sadness —
is this what the world felt like
when your marriages were staring
into the abyss, on the edge of jumping?
I’d expected to be angry in the hours
and minutes before taking the leap,
not deflated and gutted.  

Yes: the anger,
what there was,
was gone by then,
taking with it
any love remaining,
and the long night of
what would never be
appeared in their places.  

(inspired by the poem “Dawn of the Long Night,” by Marianne Tefft)