PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

She knocked tentatively on the door of the shack her soon-to-be ex was living in, more like a shed really, situated at the back of a friend's property. He'd been shut down and distant for several months, she was worried about him but what needed to be done needed doing. He opened the door, looking disheveled would be an understatement, haunted was more like it. His face red and swollen like from drinking or crying or maybe both. He said nothing but left the door open for her and walked over to the camp kitchen set up in a corner of the room, poured water from a plastic gallon jug into a banged up enameled wash basin and splashed his face, wiped it with the t-shirt he was wearing. She knew better than to ask if he was ok, he was not one for verbalizing the private thoughts running through his mind. "I've brought some papers for you to sign", she dropped the brown envelope on the wire reel that he was using for a table, scattered with pens & pencils, receipts, scraps of paper, spiral notebooks & writing tablets, coffee mugs and a nearly empty bottle of Crown Royal. Clearly he was in an enormous amount of emotional pain and on a writing bender. There was no talking to him while he was living in his head. He sat down on a wood stump, picked a cigarette butt from a saucer and lit it.

She looked around the room, dirty clothes piled in a corner, dingy sheets on an unmade bed, threadbare quilt stitched together with patches of old jeans and flannel shirts. She recognized a patch of flowery fabric from Vi's favorite dress when she was three. The only bright object in the room was a scarf laid lovingly across his pillow. Crocheted from a myriad of blue yarns with a red velvet heart stitched onto the end. It had a strange glow about it as precious objects often do having been cherished so completely that they become enchanted. A wave of understanding rolled over her, "So you've finally found her." He scooted an Altoids tin closer to him, fiddled with a bud breaking it into bits, stuffed the nuggets into a clay pipe. He looked at her with empty eyes, "No, she found me."