Screenland Drive

It was indeed expected
Years and years we waited for it to be finished, over, done
A life stretched over days, weeks, months, years, decades
It was quite understood
A silent agreement
No one would come undone

And you were waiting in the yellow light
The dusk just barely collapsing into the familiar arms of night
Walking through that same wooden door for the thousandth time
A warm glow curtains closed in the gloaming
The blinking caress of Christmas lights
No one saw you coming, no one saw you going

Shuffling through rooms bereft of life and hope long ago
An old man stirs a cup of coffee
The tired old house sighs in some final relief
Things to be done, no time for disbelief

A knock on the door
Papers and forms and documents and pens
The strangest of strange thoughts
We will never swim in the azure pool
again

There is the weary and bent bed we slept in
There are the ancient rooms we played in
There are the cracked cups we drank from
In the eerie, grey dawn
In some other life, in some other eon

There is the table where you dried my tears
There are the fading pictures, proof positive
We were all once here and how it seemed so very promised and long
Still the hollow voices will carry on

There was a road that stretched so long and far
Into the future
A memory of an endless bright white afternoon
A splash of chlorine, the taste of tea
We never said goodbye to you
Only a hand held so tightly
The warmth of forever so mad and deceiving

In the rooms where you dried those tears
We turned our backs as they packed you away
In a cold black bag
For another life, another dream, another day

A few drops under the tongue
A desperate plea for sleep
A heart that whispered “No more”
A promise even these grand illusions can’t keep

Gone, long gone, now
Where did you go?
And we waited and we waited and we waited.
It was expected… the time had justly come.
It was not however…
That we would ever come undone.