I was not well that day. <br /> <br />Two weeks of late nights and countless <br />vodkas <br />thirty cigarettes a day <br />and artificial light; <br />I was not looking my best. <br />I had a tenuous hold on my temper. <br />I was spoiling for a fight. <br /> <br />I read of my love’s infidelity <br />on the back of a toilet door <br />scrawled in the illiterate hand <br />of a twenty-five year old hairdresser’s assistant <br />twenty-five and an assistant. <br />I ask you. I re-read it. I re-read it aloud. <br />And I wondered if it was true, while <br />picturing them together. Her bleach blondeness <br />against the golden skin of his arm nestled; <br />while he strokes her neck. <br />And through the sound of taps and basins and <br />vanity <br />I heard the sound of my heart fracturing <br />A stress line like a hairline crack. <br /> <br />Tired eyes stared back at me, from <br />a stained mirror under fluorescent lights <br />and I held it against you that I had to be here <br />That I saw her cheap boast at all <br />that you had so little taste <br />that I was so easy to fool. <br /> <br />There was a wall of fire outside <br />the roar of a thousand overheated voices <br />desperate to connect. Just connect, man. I <br />remembered the cold sweetness of the morning <br />the incomparable freshness of a November dawn <br />and I was overwhelmed <br />with the need to escape <br />and I planned. <br /> <br />I could sit on my balcony and breath the <br />first breath of a new day <br />safe and unsoiled. I could run home <br />through the street and wash in the frost. <br />I could leave now and leave you, <br />all that stood between us was a step <br />and the mystery of love. I wanted. <br />I yearned. I saw myself standing high above the street <br />Pure and alone. <br /> <br />The crowd parted before me, <br />People looked and turned away. <br />Not too many women striding through a club, <br />Tears running in black lines around their eyes, <br />Fists clenched <br />while smiling.<br /><br />Geraldine Moorkens Byrne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/firewall/
